REESE  LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


,  igo 


No.        «  *  &  4  O  0  .   Cltus  No  . 


a 

-ir-u— ir^r? 


TEN 

NEW  ENGLAND 
LEADERS 


BY 

WILLISTON  WALKER 

M 


SILVER,  BURDETT  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  BOSTON  CHICAGO 


COPYRIGHT,  1901, 
BY  SILVER,  BURDETT  &  COMPANY 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

T 


HE  lectures  here  presented  were  delivered  on  the 
Southworth  Foundation,"  in  Andover  Theo- 


logical Seminary  in  1898  and  1899.  In  the  selection  U;M, 
of  the  subjects  of  these  biographical  sketches  the 
lecturer  aimed  to  present  as  varied  and  as  typical 
representatives  of  the  religious  thought  of  Congrega- 
tional New  England  as  the  number  of  hours  placed  at 
his  disposal  would  permit.  Other  names  that  will 
readily  occur  to  the  reader  might  fittingly  have  been 
added ;  but  it  is  believed  that  each  of  the  men  whose 
portrait  has  here  been  attempted  deserves  the  title 
of  a  leader  of  New  England. 

HARTFORD,  CONN., 

April  is,  190*. 


92450 


CONTENTS 

PACK 

I. — WILLIAM  BRADFORD 3 

II. — JOHN  COTTON         .        .  .40^ 

V^ 

III. — RICHARD  MATHER. 


IV. — JOHN  ELIOT   .......  137 

V. — INCREASE  MATHER 175 

VI. — JONATHAN  EDWARDS 217 

VII. — CHARLES  CHAUNCY 267 

VIII. — SAMUEL  HOPKINS 313 

IX. — LEONARD  WOODS   .         .         .        .         .         .361 

X. — LEONARD  BACON 409 

INDEX 457 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD 


I. 

WILLIAM    BRADFORD 

IN  undertaking  the  Southworth  Lectures  on  Congre- 
gationalism, I  am  reminded  that  several  themes  of 
great  importance  have  been  treated,  and  in  a  sense 
made  their  permanent  possession,  by  those  who  have 
stood  at  this  desk  before  me.  Our  learned  and  be- 
loved Dr.  Henry  Martyn  Dexter,  than  whom  none  is 
more  deserving  of  honored  remembrance  by  all  inter- 
ested in  Congregational  history,  here  sketched  out 
those  marvellously  patient  studies  on  the  beginnings 
of  our  religious  story,  afterward  gathered  into  a  stately 
volume  under  the  title  of  The  Congregationalism  of  the 
last  Three  Hundred  Years  as  Seen  in  its  Literature, —  a 
volume  which,  though  now  eighteen  years  old,  leaves 
to  those  who  follow  him  but  scanty  gleanings  of  new 
facts  to  gather  from  his  well-reaped  field.  Here,  too, 
our  honored  Dr.  A.  Hastings  Ross  set  forth,  under 
the  descriptive  title  of  The  Church- Kingdom,  the  most 
elaborate  and,  in  some  respects,  the  most  suggestive 
presentation  of  our  polity  made  in  recent  years.  As 
incumbent  of  this  lectureship,  also,  Dr.  Amory  H. 
Bradford  has  lately  outlined  the  development  of  the 

3 


4  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

churches  of  our  order  in  England,  and  shown  the 
spiritual  and  institutional  kinship  of  the  Congrega- 
tional body  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 

Barred  thus  from  the  selection  of  certain  topics 
which  master  hands  have  wrought  upon,  the  present 
lecturer  has  deemed  it  alike  the  part  of  modesty  and 
of  wisdom  to  choose  a  simpler  theme.  Instead  of  try- 
ing to  unfold  before  you  the  development  of  a  great 
religious  movement  as  a  whole,  or  attempting  to  out- 
line the  proper  organization  of  the  Body  of  Christ,  he 
has  thought  it  best  to  present  to  you  a  brief  series  of 
biographical  sketches  of  men  prominent  in  various 
epochs  of  Congregational  history.  In  connection  with 
these  lives  something  of  the  story  of  Congregationalism 
as  a  whole  will  necessarily  be  glanced  at ;  but  the  indi- 
vidual, human  element  will  be  kept  as  prominent  as  is 
consistent  with  a  recollection  that  the  prescribed  theme 
of  these  lectures  is  "  Congregationalism." 

In  selecting  the  subjects  of  our  studies  one  is  embar- 
rassed by  the  number  of  those  who  have  almost  equal 
claim  to  a  place  in  our  consideration.  Congregational- 
ism has  never  produced  a  single  leader  of  overshadow- 
ing influence,  as  has  Lutheranism,  or  Methodism,  or 
Moravianism.  As  befits  a  polity  essentially  demo- 
cratic, it  has  enjoyed  in  all  periods  of  its  history  many 
guides  of  strong  individuality,  forceful  character,  and 
high  moral  worth.  And,  therefore,  as  a  selection  is 
imperatively  demanded  by  the  limitations  of  a  course 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  5 

of  lectures,  I  shall  present  to  you  a  series  of  men,  all 
of  them  prominent  in  their  times,  but  not  the  only, 
or  exclusively  the  ablest,  leaders  of  Congregationalism. 
I  desire  rather  that  they  should  be,  as  far  as  possible, 
typical  not  only  of  the  periods  in  which  they  lived, 
but  of  a  wide  variety  of  Congregational  life  and 
thought.  It  is  with  this  purpose  in  view  that  I  have 
chosen  William  Bradford  as  the  subject  of  this  first 
lecture.  Not  a  minister,  not  a  holder,  apparently,  at 
any  time  of  any  churchly  office,  he  was  nevertheless 
so  identified  with  the  inception,  the  exile,  and  the 
transplanting  of  the  Pilgrim  Church  that  his  experi- 
ences are  an  epitome  of  its  history. 

It  is  always  difficult  to  picture  to  ourselves  an  era 
different  from  our  own.  We  are,  most  of  us,  sojmich 
the^creatures  of  the.  ._age_j tT^which^we live  that  any  ap- 
preciation of  the  thought,  or  even  of  the  material  sur- 
roundings, of  a  bygone  generation  is  difficult;  and 
even  those  of  antiquarian  tastes  more  often  know  a 
number  of  facts  of  interest  regarding  a  past  epoch 
than  enter  into  its  spirit.  The  past  to  us  is  like  some 
strange  country  across  the  sea,  from  which  explorers 
bring  reports  of  customs  and  of  interests  which  strike 
us  as  quaint  or  amusing  because  of  their  want  of  con- 
formity to  what  we  see  about  us ;  of  heated  excitement 
about  questions  which  seem  trivial  because  they  do 
not  happen  to  be  the  questions  which  concern  us; — a 
land  in  which  men  move  as  in  a  haze,  unreal,  nebulous, 


6  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

not  flesh  and  blood  as  men  and  women  whom  our  morn, 
ing  newspaper  brings  to  our  acquaintance.  It  is, 
therefore,  no  easy  task  to  transport  ourselves  in  fancy 
back  more  than  three  hundred  years  to  the  little  York- 
shire farming  hamlet  of  Austerfield,  where  Bradford 
was  baptized  on  March  19,  1590,  probably  very  shortly 
after  his  birth.  What  life  may  have  been  in  such  a 
rural  townlet  for  an  orphaned  boy,  brought  up  by  a 
grandfather's  and  then  by  an  uncle's  care,  only  vigor- 
ous imagination  will  enable  us  to  conjecture  from  the 
few  hints  that  have  come  down  to  us. 

Though  of  a  yeoman  family,  the  best-to-do  of  any  in 
the  little  community,  Bradford's  early  life  must  have 
been  outwardly  the  monotonous  and  laborious  round 
of  an  agricultural  toiler  in  that  unpicturesque  but  fer- 
tile section  of  England,  in  days  when  farm  machinery 
beyond  the  rudest  implements  was  yet  unthought  of. 
To  be  sure,  the  great  North  Road  from  London  to 
York  ran,  an  unfenced  horse-track,  through  the  village 
of  Bawtry,  a  mile  away;  yet  Austerfield  must  have 
heard  little  of  what  went  on  in  the  world  at  large. 
Doubtless  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada,  nearly 
two  years  before  Bradford  was  born,  brought  rejoicing 
to  Austerfield,  but  travellers  of  the  yeoman  class  were 
few,  and  news  from  the  great  world  outside  filtered 
slowly  among  those  who,  as  Bradford  himself  says, 
were  "  used  to  plaine  countrie  life." 

Yet   in  that  outer  world  it  was  a  time  of  marked 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  7 

events.  The  splendid  reign  of  Elizabeth  was  drawing 
to  its  brilliant  close.  Relieved  of  fear  of  overthrow 
from  without  by  the  death  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots, 
and  the  discomfiture  of  the  avenging  Spanish  fleet, 
the  English  mind  bloomed  in  a  wealth  and  beauty  of 
literature  such  as  no  other  epoch  of  English  story  has 
displayed.  The  year  of  Bradford's  birth  witnessed  the 
publication  Of  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene  ;  in  1593,  when 
Bradford  was  perhaps  learning  his  letters  at  his  grand- 
father's knee,  came  that  "  first  heir  of  [his]  invention," 
the  Venus  and  Adonis  of  Shakespeare.  In  1597,  the 
year  after  the  orphaned  Austerfield  boy  was  trans- 
ferred by  the  death  of  his  grandfather  to  an  uncle's 
care,  Bacon's  Essays  first  awoke  the  admiration  of 
English  readers.  Of  all  these  things  of  such  vast  mo- 
ment in  English  letters  little  Austerfield  knew  noth- 
ing, and  of  any  subsequent  knowledge  of  them  the 
boy  who  grew  to  youth  while  they  were  happening 
showed  no  trace. 

But  there  was  a  concern  which,  more  than  any 
other,  touched  all  men  in  England  at  that  day,  and 
that  was  religion.  No  feature  of  the  great  national 
drama  which  had  been  played  before  the  eyes  of  two 
generations  of  Englishmen  before  Bradford's  birth  had 
so  immediate  and  visible  an  interest  to  a  young  man  of 
Austerfield,  or  of  any  other  English  village,  as  that 
which  concerned  the  Church.  The  wars  with  Spain, 
the  voyages  of  a  Raleigh  or  of  a  Drake,  were  at  best 


8  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

distant  and  shadowy  compared  with  the  changes  that 
had  been  witnessed  in  the  hamlet  place  of  worship, 
the  gift  of  John  de  Builli  to  the  Benedictines  of  Blyth 
more  than  four  hundred  years  '  before  Bradford  was 
brought  to  its  font  for  baptism.  Perhaps  the  first  evi- 
dence of  the  royal  revolt  from  Rome  which  Austerfield 
had  seen  had  been  in  the  youth  of  Bradford's  grand- 
father, when,  in  1536,*  King  Henry  VIII.,  whom  an 
obsequious  Parliament  had  two  years  before  declared 
to  be  "  the  only  supreme  Head  in  earth  of  the  Church 
of  England,"  had  suppressed  the  monastery  of  Blyth, 
to  which  little  Austerfield  and  the  neighboring  Bawtry 
looked  for  the  appointment  of  their  curates.  The 
King  ultimately  transferred  the  monastic  right  of  ap- 
pointment at  Blyth  and  consequently  the  determina- 
tion of  what  spiritual  oversight  Austerfield  should 
enjoy,  to  the  newly  founded  Trinity  College  of  Cam. 
bridge  University.  This  suppression  was  itself  only 
an  incident  in  the  general  abolition  of  monasticism 
throughout  England;  but  the  stir  occasioned  in  the 
minds  of  the  Austerfield  dwellers  was  doubtless  very 
considerable,  for  the  region  had  possessed  a  larger 
proportion  of  these  monastic  establishments  than  most 
parts  of  the  realm.  Cistercians,  Carthusians,  Gilbert- 
ines,  Augustinians,  Premonstratensians,  and  Benedic- 

1  See  Raine,  History  and  Antiquities  of  the  Parish  of  Blyth,  passim. 
Westminster,  1860. 

2  Raine,  ibid.,  72,  says  1535,  but  he  is  evidently  confused  between 
Old  and  New  Style. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  9 

tines  had  all  dwelt  in  the  near  vicinity.1  The  region 
had  fiercely  resented  this  royal  invasion  of  ancient 
rights;  Lincolnshire  and  Yorkshiremen,  perhaps  some 
from  Austerfield  itself,  had  risen  in  revolt  in  the 
interest  of  the  older  institutions  in  1536,  but  the  iron 
will  of  the  sovereign  had  prevailed  here  as  elsewhere. 
Almost  immediately  after  the  dissolution  of  the 
monastery  of  Blyth,  if  the  royal  mandates  were  en- 
forced, as  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  they 
were,  a  copy  of  the  Bible  in  English  was  placed  in 
Austerfield  church,  as  in  every  other  church  in  the 
kingdom.3  Still  the  service  continued  almost  entirely 
in  Latin  and  substantially  unaltered  in  doctrinal  pur- 
port. Then,  in  1549,  Austerfield  in  all  probability  wit- 
nessed the  introduction  of  the  English  Prayer  Book, 
only  to  have  a  revised  form  substituted  in  1552;  to  see 
this  swept  away  in  1553  in  favor  of  the  ritual  of  the 
closing  days  of  Henry  VIII.,  and  substantially  restored 
in  1559.  As  late  as  1569,  after  Bradford's  father  had 
grown  to  manhood,  a  great  wave  of  insurrection 
directed  against  these  changes  rolled  from  the  north 
almost  to  Austerfield ;  and  so  strongly  had  the  old 
faith  entrenched  itself,  that,  even  after  Bradford's 
birth,  several  of  the  neighboring  county  families,3  in- 

1  Joseph  Hunter,  Collections  concerning  .  .  .  the  Founders  of  New 
Plymouth,  pp.  24,  25.  London,  1854. 

'2  J.  A.  Froude,  History  of  England,  iii.,  p.  80.  Books  were  to  be 
provided  before  August  I,  1537. 

3  Hunter,  Collections,  pp.  25,  108. 


10  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

eluding  that  from  which  his  uncle-guardian  leased  part 
of  the  acres  that  young  Bradford  tilled,  were  still  its 
adherents. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose,  however,  that  these 
changes  of  institutions  and  forms  of  worship  were  ac- 
companied by  any  material  alteration  in  the  character 
of  the  Austerfield  ministry,  or  any  very  strenuous  in- 
sistance  on  vital  religion.  The  curate  of  Bawtry,  a 
mile  away  from  Austerfield  and,  like  it,  a  spiritual  de- 
pendency of  Blyth,  is  described  in  the  visitation  of 
1548  as  "  unlerned."  '  What  degree  of  ignorance  this 
may  have  implied  may  be  surmised  perhaps  from  the 
contemporary  statement  of  Bishop  Hooper  of  Glouces- 
ter, that  of  the  priests  of  that  diocese  under  the  Ed- 
wardine  Reformation  "  one  hundred  and  sixty-eight 
could  not  say  the  Ten  Commandments."2  Nor  had 
matters  grown  much  better  twenty  years  later  under 
Elizabeth,  when,  in  1569,  a  report  from  the  diocese  of 
Chichester,3  a  region  in  which  the  Reformation  had 
made  much  more  progress  than  in  Yorkshire,  affirmed 
that  "  in  many  churches  they  have  no  sermons,  not 
one  in  seven  years,  and  some  not  one  in  twelve  years 
.  .  .  few  churches  have  their  quarter  sermons  "  \i.  <?., 
the  four  yearly  discourses,  then  the  legal  minimum  of 
ministerial  pulpit  effort] ; 

1  Raine,  ibid.,  p.  177. 

2  William  Clark,  The  Anglican  Reformation,  p.  181.     1897. 

3  Froude,  History  of  England,  ix.,  p.  512. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  II 

Cotton  Mather  affirms  that  the  inhabitants  of  Aus- 
terfield  in  Bradford's  boyhood  were  "  a  most  ignorant 
and  licentious  people,  and  like  unto  their  priest." 
Happily  there  is  reason  to  believe  the  description  ex- 
aggerated. .  The  curate  of  the  little  church,  Henry 
Fletcher,  certainly  had  the  clerical  merit,  then  by  no 
means  universal,  of  residing  in  the  community  of  which 
he  was  the  accredited  spiritual  leader;  but  the  judg- 
ment of  the  antiquary,  the  Rev.  Joseph  Hunter,  ex- 
pressed more  than  forty  years  ago,  is  doubtless  correct, 
that  Bradford  owed  little  to  Fletcher's  ministry;2  and 
as  to  the  widely  prevalent  unspirituality  and  ignorance 
of  the  ministry  and  people  of  England  at  the  close  of 
Elizabeth's  reign  there  is  abundant  evidence. 

That  this  state  of  affairs  existed  so  generally  was 
due  to  the  peculiar  character  of  the  English  Reforma- 
tion. That  movement,  more  than  any  corresponding 
development  on  the  Continent,  was  checked  and  con- 
trolled by  political  considerations.  National  indepen- 
dence from  foreign  control  was  the  one  thought  to 
which  the  English  people,  as  a  whole,  readily  re- 
sponded ;  but,  for  many  years  after  the  papal  authority 
had  been  rejected,  nothing  like  a  majority  of  the  in- 
habitants of  England  could  be  counted  as  favorers  of 
Protestant  doctrine.  A  church  essentially  unchanged 
in  organization  and  discipline,  and  largely  Roman  in 
ritual  and  belief,  while  English  in  language  and  gov- 

1  Magnalia,  ed.  1853,  i.,  p.  109.     2  Collections,  pp.  112,  113. 


12  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

eminent,  was  the  preference  not  only  of  Elizabeth, 
but,  certainly,  till  the  defeat  of  the  Armada,  of  a  ma- 
jority of  Englishmen.  Yet  side  by  side  with  this  con- 
servative tendency  ran  the  strong  current  of  intense 
Protestant  conviction,  led  especially  by  those  who  had 
come  into  contact  with  the  Calvinistic  divines  of  the 
Continent  during  the  Marian  persecutions, —  a  current 
sweeping  into  its  control  an  ever  increasing  proportion 
of  the  people  as  Elizabeth's  reign  went  on.  These 
two  antagonistic  elements  the  great  Queen  kept  from 
such  civil  conflict  as  France  contemporaneously  wit- 
nessed ;  but  at  the  expense  of  a  compromise  policy 
that  preserved  the  ancient  ministry  largely  undisturbed 
by  inquiry  as  to  belief  or  fitness,  and  repressed  severely 
the  more  strenuous  desires  of  the  Protestants.  The 
latter  sought  the  abandonment  of  such  remaining  Ro- 
man vestments  and  practices  as  they  deemed  super- 
stitious; the  maintenance  of  an  educated,  spiritually 
enlightened,  earnest  ministry,  which  should  preach  the 
intenser  doctrines  of  Calvinistic  Protestantism  with 
soul-searching  force;  and  the  purification  of  each 
parish  by  the  enforcement  of  rigorous  discipline.  To 
their  thinking,  the  maintenance  by  the  Queen  of 
the  half-reformed,  unstrenuous,  lax-disciplined,  non- 
preaching  clergy  who  so  largely  filled  the  land,  was  a 
deprivation  of  the  people  of  the  means  of  grace.  In 
the  view  of  the  Queen,  to  have  permitted  the  extremer 
Protestants,  or,  as  they  were  usually  nicknamed,  the 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  13 

'  Puritans,"  to  have  their  way  would  have  been  to 
throw  the  county  into  civil  discord,  to  limit  the  royal 
supremacy,  and  to  go  counter  to  her  own  religious 
preferences,  which  were  all  anti-Protestant  save  on  the 
question  of  her  own  supremacy.  And  so  it  came 
about  that  the  Queen  and  the  bishops  whom  she  ap- 
pointed everywhere  repressed  the  Puritans,  and  insisted 
that  they  be  held  in  conformity  to  the  ritual  prescribed 
by  law;  so  it  came  about,  also,  that,  while  little 
Austerfield  had  a  Bible,  at  least  in  its  church,  and 
enjoyed  a  ritual  in  the  English  tongue  from  which 
the  more  obnoxious  features  of  Romanism  had  been 
purged  away,  its  pulpit  was  silent,  its  minister  igno- 
rant and  easy-going,  and  its  discipline  lax. 

This  repression  by  the  constituted  authorities  in- 
duced Puritanism  to  take  increasingly  an  intenser 
form.  Before  Elizabeth's  reign  had  passed  far  into  its 
second  decade,  some  Puritans  had  raised  the  question 
whether  a  system  of  church  government  wherein  the 
ecclesiastical  authorities,  particularly  the  bishops  who 
were  the  immediate  royal  agents,  had  such  powers 
to  prevent  the  execution  of  what  Puritans  believed  to 
be  essential  and  Scriptural  reforms,  could  be  the  right 
form  of  church  organization.  Under  the  lead  of 
Thomas  Cartwright,  from  1569  onward,  the  more  ad- 
vanced Puritans,  while  clinging  to  the  idea  of  a 
national  Church  of  which  all  baptized  inhabitants  of 
England  were  members,  denied  the  rightfulness  of  the 


14  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

Anglican  Establishment  as  tested  by  the  Word  of 
God,  and  began  to  agitate  for  its  substantial  alteration 
by  governmental  authority.  To  a  small  radical  wing 
of  the  advanced  Puritans  even  this  seemed  too  slow  a 
method  of  approximation  to  the  standard  which  they 
thought  was  set  up  in  the  New  Testament ;  and,  begin- 
ning with  Robert  Browne  in  1580,  they  taught  that 
the  true  method  of  reform  was  the  separation  of 
Christian  men  and  women  from  an  Establishment 
which  seemed  to  them  so  little  answering  to  the 
apostolic  congregations,  and  their  organization  by 
mutual  covenant  into  churches  designedly  on  the 
model  of  those  of  the  Acts  and  the  Pauline  Epistles. 
If  the  Bible  is  the  sole  source  of  doctrine,  as  all  Re- 
formation divines  held  it  to  be,  why  is  it  not  of  polity 
also  ?  was  their  argument;  and,  judged  by  the  Biblical 
standard,  was  not  the  Establishment,  which  tolerated 
so  much  that  was  worldly  and  unspiritual  and  was  ruled 
in  a  way  so  different  from  the  churches  of  the  first 
century,  essentially  un-Christian  and  therefore  to  be 
abandoned  by  those  earnestly  seeking  the  Kingdom 
of  God  ?  These  were  no  mere  speculative  theories, 
but  beliefs  for  which,  within  the  fifteen  years  that  pre- 
ceded Bradford's  fourth  birthday,  several  hundred 
men  and  women  from  Norwich,  Bury  St.  Edmunds, 
Gloucester,  and  London  had  suffered  imprisonment 
and  exile,  and  which  no  fewer  than  six  men  had  sealed 
with  a  martyr's  death. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  15 

But  how  was  it  that  the  youthful  Bradford,  in  the 
remote  country  village  of  Austerfield,  came  to  embrace 
the  most  strenuous  type  of  Puritan  faith  ?  The  ex- 
planation is  to  be  found  in  the  presence,  in  the  near 
vicinity,  of  several  sympathizers  with  advanced  Puritan 
views.  Of  these  the  most  influential  were  a  clergy- 
man and  a  layman,  Rev.  Richard  Clyfton  and  Post- 
master William  Brewster.  Both  had  been  students 
at  Cambridge  University,1  and  had  there  come,  if  not 
before,  under  the  dominant  impress  of  Puritanism, 
then  largely  influential  in  that  seat  of  learning.  Both 
began  their  active  work  shortly  before  the  time  of 
Bradford's  birth;  Clyfton  having  become  rector  at 
Babworth,2  nine  or  ten  miles  south  of  Austerfield,  in 
July,  1 586,  at  the  age  of  thirty-three ;  and  Brewster  hav- 
ing begun  to  assist  his  invalid  father  as  postmaster  at 
the  old  archiepiscopal  manor  of  Scrooby,  less  than  three 
miles  from  Austerfield  on  the  way  to  Babworth,  early 
in  1 589,"  being  then  some  ten  years  younger  than  Clyf- 
ton.4 Clyfton's  vigorous  Puritan  preaching  and 
catechising 5  from  his  vantage  as  incumbent  of  the 
Babworth  living,  was  ably  seconded  by  Brewster's  zeal 
in  securing  the  services  of  other  Puritan  ministers  for 
more  temporary  labors  in  the  region.  For  this  work 

1  Edward  Arber,  Story  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  pp.  51,  189.  London, 
1897.  9/foV.,p.  52.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  71,  83. 

4  John  Brown,   The  Pilgrim  Fathers,  p.  54.      1895.     He  was  born  in 
1566-7. 

5  Bradford,  Dialogue,  in  Young's  Chronicle  of  the  Pilgrims,  p.  453. 


1 6  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

Brewster's  position  as  postmaster  on  the  great  North 
Road  gave  opportunity,  and  his  own  purse  contributed 
more  largely  than  that  of  anyone  else  to  support  the 
preaching  that  he  desired.1  The  result,  as  described 
in  Bradford's  own  words,2  was  that 

"by  the  travell  &  diligence  of  some  godly  &  zealous 
preachers,  &  Gods  blessing  on  their  labours,  as  in  other 
places  of  ye  land,  so  in  ye  North  parts,  many  became  in- 
lightened  by  ye  word  of  God,  and  had  their  ignorance  & 
sins  discovered  unto  them,  and  begane  by  his  grace  to  re- 
forme  their  lives." 

One  of  those  thus  spiritually  quickened  was  the 
youthful  Bradford  himself.  Of  a  thoughtful  turn  of 
mind  by  reason  of  illness,  he  was  led  by  his  study  of 
the  Bible  to  desire  some  more  awakening  religious  in- 
struction than  the  ministrations,  such  as  they  may 
have  been,  of  Henry  Fletcher  at  Austerfield  afforded. 
And  so  he  began,  as  a  boy  of  little  more  than  twelve, 
to  make  his  way,  as  opportunity  offered,  down  the 
road  and  across  the  fields  to  Babworth;  and,  as  he 
grew  a  little  older,  was  introduced  to  that  company  of 
seekers  for  a  warmer  spiritual  life  who  met  under 
Brewster's  roof  at  Scrooby.  Such  a  course  must  have 
required  no  little  resolution  in  the  boy,  for  it  had  no 
countenance  from  his  neighbors  or  his  uncles;3  and 
was  sure  to  involve  serious  dangers  of  ecclesiastical 

1  Bradford,  History  of  Plimouth  Plantation,  p.  490.     Boston,  1898. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  ii,  12. 

3  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  no. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  I/ 

and  governmental  interference.  Yet  we  may  imagine 
that  Bradford's  boyish  determination  was  greatly 
strengthened  when,  apparently  in  1604,  John  Robin- 
son,1 fresh  from  Cambridge  and  Norwich,  came  to  the 
region,  not  improbably  as  one  of  the  preachers  of 
Puritan  earnestness  obtained  by  Brewster,  and  speedily 
added  his  strong,  wise,  and  generous  leadership  to  the 
little  company  of  seekers  for  a  fuller  reformation.  To 
know  Robinson  was  in  itself  an  education.  No  nobler 
figure  stands  forth  in  the  story  of  early  Congregation- 
alism than  that  of  this  moderate,  earnest,  patient, 
learned,  kindly  man,  who  was  for  the  next  sixteen 
years  to  be  Bradford's  friend  and  guide.  Nor  shall  we 
be  far  wrong,  I  take  it,  if  we  attribute  to  the  influence 
of  this  one-time  fellow  of  Corpus  Christi  College,  aided 
perhaps  in  a  less  degree  by  that  of  Brewster  and  Clyf- 
ton,  that  love  for  learning,  which  in  spite  of  a  total 
lack  of  all  the  ordinary  early  advantages  for  an  educa- 
tion, made  Bradford  proficient  in  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Hebrew,  besides  the  considerable  acquaintance  with 
Dutch  and  French  which  his  exile  brought  to  him.2 
The  coming  of  a  very  different,  but  equally  earnest, 
man,  the  erratic,  energetic,  zealous  John  Smyth,3  to  the 

1  Dexter,  Congregationalism  as  Seen,  pp.  373-376. 

2  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  113. 

3  The  date,  1602,  usually  assigned  for  the  beginning  of  Smyth's  Gains- 
borough work  has  been  subjected  to   recent  criticism.     Dr.    Dexter, 
True  Story  of  John  Smyth  (1881,  p.  2),  was  inclined  to  accept  it  on  the 
strength  of  Nathaniel  Morton's  New  England*  Memoriall  (ii.),  though 


1 8  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

important  town  of  Gainsborough,  some  eight  or  nine 
miles  east  of  Scrooby  and  Austerfield,  probably  late  in 
1605  or  early  in  1606,  undoubtedly  added  to  the  gen- 
eral stir  and  ferment  of  the  region. 

It  would  not  appear  that  Clyfton  and  Brewster,  the 
spiritual  guides  of  the  youthful  Bradford,  desired  or 
designed  at  first  to  separate  from  the  Church  of  England. 
They  earnestly  wished  the  reform  of  the  Establishment 
into  something  more  nearly  approaching  what  they 
deemed  the  Biblical  model,  they  emphasized  preaching, 
they  sought  a  more  strenuous  moral  discipline ;  but  they 
were  not  as  yet  Separatists.  Yet  the  opposition  of  the 
ecclesiastical  authorities  forced  them  ultimately  to  the 
Separatist  position ;  and  soon  after  the  coming  of 
Robinson  and  Smyth  to  the  region,  probably  in  1606, 
two  churches  '  were  formed,  designedly  on  the  New 
Testament  model.  One  of  these  churches  was  organ- 
even  he  regarded  it  as  "  rather  early."  But  Professor  Arber,  Story  of 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers  (1897,  pp.  133,  134),  shows  pretty  conclusively  that 
Smyth  was  a  "lecturer"  in  Lincoln  as  late  as  March,  1605,  and  there- 
fore could  not  have  begun  his  work  at  Gainsborough  till  after  that  time. 
On  the  other  hand,  Arber's  identification  of  him  with  the  John  Smith 
who  graduated  M.A.  at  Cambridge  in  1593  (ibid.,  p.  132)  rather  than 
with  the  graduate  who  received  that  degree  in  1579  (Dexter,  etc.)  seems 
less  successful.  Compare  Thompson  Cooper  in  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography  (liii.,  p.  68).  Since  the  organization  of  the  Scrooby  church, 
which  crossed  the  Atlantic  in  the  Mayflorver,  seems  to  have  been  occa- 
sioned by,  or  at  least  contemporary  with  (if  not  indeed  originally  in 
union  with),  the  formation  of  Smyth's  Separatist  congregation  at  Gains- 
borough, the  question  of  the  date  of  the  beginning  of  his  ministry  there 
is  of  importance  in  determining  the  age  of  the  Mayflower  church. 

1  Arber,  ibid.,  p.  54. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  19 

ized  at  Gainsborough,  and  though  destined  to  encounter 
much  distraction  under  the  leadership  of  Smyth  in  the 
Netherlands,  was  to  be  the  means  of  establishing  the 
first  Baptist  church  in  England.1  The  other  was 
gathered  at  Scrooby,  and  like  that  of  Gainsborough 
speedily  became  an  exile  under  Clyfton  and  Robinson 
in  Holland,  but  was  privileged  to  become  the  mother 
of  the  Congregational  churches  of  New  England. 

The  resolution  thus  to  separate  from  the  Church  of 
their  fathers  was  not  quickly  or  rashly  formed  by  these 
Christians.  It  was  the  outcome  of  their  study  of  the 
Word  of  God  under  the  illumination  of  the  persecutions 
to  which  their  reformatory  efforts  within  the  Establish- 
ment subjected  them  from  its  constituted  authorities. 
Bradford  himself  points  this  out  very  clearly.  Describ- 
ing the  steps  which  brought  him  and  his  associates  to 
the  organization  of  the  Scrooby  church,  he  says: 2 

'  They  [the  reformers]  were  both  scoffed  and  scorned  by 
ye  prophane  multitude,  and  ye  ministers  urged  with  ye  yoak 
of  subscription,  or  els  must  be  silenced;  and  ye  poore  people 
were  so  vexed  with  apparators,  &  pursuants,  &  ye  comis- 
sarie  courts,  as  truly  their  affliction  was  not  smale;  which, 
notwithstanding,  they  bore  sundrie  years  with  much  pa- 
tience, till  they  were  occasioned  (by  ye  continuance  &  en- 
crease  of  these  troubls,  and  other  means  which  ye  Lord 
raised  up  in  those  days)  to  see  further  into  things  by  the 
light  of  ye  word  of  God.  How  not  only  these  base  and 
beggerly  ceremonies  were  unlawfull,  but  also  that  ye  lordly 

1  A.    H.    Newman,   History   of  Anti-Pedobaptism,    p.    391.      Phila- 
delphia, 1897.  2  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  pp.  12,  13. 


20  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

&  tiranous  power  of  ye  prelats  ought  not  to  be  submitted 
unto;  which  thus,  contrary  to  the  freedome  of  the  gospell, 
would  load  &  burden  mens  consciences,  and  by  their  com- 
pulsive power  make  a  prophane  mixture  of  persons  &  things 
in  ye  worship  of  God.  ...  So  ...  they  shooke 
of  this  yoake  of  antichristian  bondage,  and  as  ye  Lords  free 
people,  joyned  them  selves  (by  a  covenant  of  the  Lord)  into 
a  church  estate,  in  ye  felowship  of  ye  gospell,  to  walke  in 
all  his  wayes,  made  known,  or  to  be  made  known  unto 
them,  according  to  their  best  endeavours,  whatsoever  it 
should  cost  them,  the  Lord  assisting  them." 

I  have  thus  dwelt  at  considerable  length  on  the 
origin  and  purpose  of  this  Congregational  church,  of 
which  Bradford,  then  entering  on  his  seventeenth  year, 
was  one  of  the  more  youthful  organizers;  and  I  have 
done  so,  if  for  no  other  purpose,  to  show  that  it  was 
no  headstrong  and  hasty  opposition  to  salutary  author- 
ity that  here  found  expression.  The  separation, 
when  it  came,  was  in  this  instance  but  the  fruit  of  a 
deep  conviction  that  the  Church  of  England  as  then 
administered  not  only  failed  to  be  what  a  Scriptural 
church  should  be,  but  that  it  was  irreformable  by  any 
efforts  which  these  men  and  women  of  Scrooby,  and 
Austerfield,  and  Babworth,  and  Gainsborough  could 
make,  and  hence  the  only  course  open  to  them  was  to 
come  out  of  it. 

But  to  come  out  of  it,  as  Bradford  and  those  older 
than  he  speedily  found,  was  to  be  subject  to  increased 
attack.  They  were  now  "  hunted  &  persecuted  on 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  21 

every  side,"  !  and,  after  some  hesitation,  took  the  mo- 
mentous step  of  leaving  home  and  country  for  the 
shelter  and  toleration  of  Holland.  Yet,  as  Bradford 
records,  "  though  they  could  not  stay,  yet  were  ye 
not  suffered  to  goe,"  8  and,  attempting  to  escape  in 
the  autumn  of  1607, 3  Bradford  found  himself  in  Boston 
prison.  His  youth,  however,  procured  him  speedy 
release;4  and,  in  the  spring  of  1608,  he,  with  his  asso- 
ciates in  exile,  was  in  Amsterdam.  Though  released 
from  persecution,  life  was  full  enough  of  difficulties  for 
these  poor  farmers  in  their  new  city  home.  The 
strange  sights  of  the  new  land  were  not  without  their 
impressiveness  to  the  observant  young  Englishman; 
but,  as  he  tells  us.  "  though  they  saw  faire  &  bewti- 
full  cities,  flowing  with  abundance  of  all  sorts  of  welth 
&  riches,  yet  it  was  not  longe  before  they  saw  the 
grime  &  grisly  face  of  povertie  coming  upon  them 
like  an  armed  man."  5 

To  battle  for  his  daily  bread,  Bradford  learned  the 
silkweaver's  trade  of  some  French  refugee,8  perhaps 
like  himself  an  exile  for  conscience,  though  no  easy 
taskmaster  to  the  learner  in  the  unaccustomed  art. 
After  the  church  of  which  Bradford  was  a  member 
removed  to  Leyden  in  the  spring  of  1609,  Bradford 

1  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  14. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  16. 

3  On  date,  see  Arber,  Pilgrim  Fathers,  p.  86. 

4  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  in. 

5  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  22. 

6  Mather,  ibid. 


22  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

pursued  the  same  general  means  of  livelihood,  though 
now  he  wrought  upon  the  stout  cotton  cloth  then 
known  as  fustian.  Indeed,  it  would  seem  that  he  in- 
vested the  small  sum  that  came  to  him  from  the  sale 
of  his  inheritance  at  Austerfield,  in  1611,  in  an  inde- 
pendent business  venture,  but  the  enterprise  brought 
him  more  experience  than  success,  and  Cotton  Mather 
believed,  probably  truly,  that  he  judged  his  loss  "  a 
correction  bestowed  by  God  upon  him  for  certain 
decays  of  internal  piety."  1  It  was  as  by  occupation 
a  "  fustian-maker  "  that  he  was  entered  in  the  public 
records2  of  Amsterdam,  when,  on  November  30,  1613, 
at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  he  was  married  to  the  six- 
teen-year-old Dorothy  May 3  of  Wisbech  in  the  home 
land,  whose  drowning  seven  years  later,  as  the  May- 
flower swung  at  anchor  in  the  harbor  of  Cape  Cod,  was 
to  sadden  Bradford's  coming  to  the  New  World.  His 
young  wife  was  a  granddaughter  of  John  May,  who 
had  died  as  Bishop  of  Carlisle  in  1598,  and  her  elder 
sister  had  been  for  four  years  settled  at  Amsterdam  as 
the  wife  of  Jean  de  1'Ecluse,  an  elder  in  the  Separatist 
church  of  which  Ainsworth  was  the  head.  Certainly 
Bradford  must  have  been  prospered,  in  some  small 
way  at  least,  as  he  grew  more  acquainted  with  his  new 
home  and  its  business  methods,  for  in  April,  1619,  he 

1  Magnalia  i.,  p,  in. 

2  Arber,  Pilgrim  Fathers,  p.  163  ;  Dexter,  Cong,  as  Seen,  p.  381. 

3  On  Dorothy  May,  see  C.  H.  Townshend  in  New  England  Historical 
and  Genealogical  Register,  1.,  p.  462. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  23 

sold  a  house  in  the  city  where  he  had  then  lived  just 
a  decade.1 

Yet  the  chief  value  to  Bradford  of  this  severe  expe- 
rience in  a  foreign  land  was,  doubtless,  the  preparation 
that  it  gave  him  for  his  greater  work  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  Those  formative  years  of  labor  and  self- 
control,  and  especially  of  association  with  Robinson 
and  Brewster  in  a  company  whose  first  desire  was  the 
service  of  God,  ripened  and  broadened 'and  deepened 
his  natural  qualities.  The  boy,  who  at  fourteen  or 
fifteen  had  been  firm  enough  to  resist  his  companions' 
jibes  and  his  uncles'  opposition,  developed  into  no  bit- 
ter and  obstinate  fanatic,  but  rather  grew,  under  the 
hard  discipline  of  his  Leyden  experience,  into  a  wise 
and  kindly  manhood,  so  that  when  the  emigration  to 
New  England  came,  in  1620,  probably  no  other  man 
of  thirty  could  have  been  found  better  fitted  to  take 
prominent  part  in  an  enterprise  demanding  patience, 
courage,  and  forbearance. 

Of  the  details  of  that  emigration  there  is  no  occasion 
to  speak  here  at  length.  We  are,  or  ought  to  be,  fa- 
miliar with  that  heroic  exodus  story;  with  its  begin- 
nings in  the  desire  of  the  exiles  to  live  as  Englishmen 
on  English  soil,  to  give  better  advantages  spiritually 
and  temporally  to  their  children,  and  above  all,  as 
Bradford  3  himself  wrote  in  noble  phrase,  in  a 

1  Dexter,   True  Story  of  John  Smyth,  p.  77. 
*  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  32. 


24  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

"  great  hope  &  inward  zeall  ...  of  laying  some  good 
foundation,  or  at  least  to  make  some  way  therimto,  for 
ye  propagating  &  advancing  ye  gospell  of  ye  kingdom  of 
Christ  in  those  remote  parts  of  ye  world;  yea,  though  they 
should  be  but  even  as  stepping  stones  unto  others  for  ye  per- 
forming of  so  great  a  work." 

Very  interesting  would  it  be,  were  not  the  facts  so 
familiar,  to  follow  the  discussions  of  the  Leyden 
church  as  timrd  souls  raised  difficulties  of  all  magni- 
tudes, from  the  expense  and  distance  of  the  expedition 
and  the  barbarous  cruelty  of  the  natives,  to  the  ability 
of  the  emigrants  to  substitute  water  for  their  accus- 
tomed beer.1  Their  negotiations  with  the  English 
government,  the  unfortunate  union  with  a  company  of 
speculative  London  merchants  into  which  their  poverty 
drove  them,  the  difficulties  of  their  long  voyage,  their 
arrival  at  the  beginning  of  winter  on  another  coast 
from  that  on  which  they  had  expected  to  make  their 
landing,  their  December  debarkation,  and  the  rough 
winter  experiences  in  home  building  in  the  wilderness, 
which  cost  them  before  the  first  springtime  more  of 
their  number  proportionately  than  have  fallen  from 
the  ranks  of  an  army  in  any  great  modern  battle,  are 
all  worthy  of  filial  remembrance.  But  it  is  with  Brad- 
ford himself  that  we  have  more  immediately  to  do. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  plan  of  emi- 
gration was  especially  his  conception.  Robinson,  who 

1  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  pp.  32-35. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  2$ 

remained  at  Leyden,  Ruling  Elder  William  Brewster,1 
Robert  Cushman,  and  John  Carver  were  all  more 
prominent  in  the  negotiations  leading  to  it  than  he. 
Yet  we  find  him  uniting  with  Fuller,  Allerton,  and 
Winslow  in  an  independent  protest  against  some  of  the 
agreements  with  the  London  merchant  partners  in  the 
colonizing  enterprise,2  which  shows  that,  before  leav- 
ing Leyden,  Bradford  was  one  of  the  more  important 
members  of  the  Separatist  community.  But,  by  the 
time  of  the  Pilgrims'  arrival  on  the  bleak  New  England 
coast,  Bradford  had  shown  himself  a  man  of  action, 
taking  a  conspicuous  share  in  the  search  for  a  place  of 
settlement;3  so  that  when  death  removed  the  first 
Governor,  John  Carver,  from  the  civil  headship  of  the 
little  commonwealth,  in  April,  1621,  the  community 
turned  naturally  and  unanimously  to  Bradford  4  as  his 
successor.  That  office,  uniting  as  it  did  the  duties  of 
the  executive,  legislative,  and  judicial  leadership,  was 
thenceforward  Bradford's  by  thirty-one  5  annual  elec- 
tions, and  would  have  been  his  uninterruptedly  through- 
out his  life  had  he  not  insisted  successfully  at  five  of  the 
thirty-six  elections  held  in  his  lifetime  on  the  desirability 
of  rotation  in  office.  He  always  served  without  salary.6 

1  Winslow  (Hypocrisie  Unmasked,  pp.  88,  89)  attributes  its  inception 
to  Robinson  and  Brewster. 

2  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  pp.  61,  62. 

3  Mourfs  Relation,  in  Young,  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  pp. 
126,  149.  4  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  in. 

5  J.  A.  Goodwin,  The  Pilgrim  Republic,  p.  456.  iSSS.      6  Ibid.,  p.  455. 


26  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

So  associated  has  the  title,  Governor,  become  in  our 
minds  with  the  headship  of  a  great  commonwealth 
that  its  application  to  Bradford  is  likely  to  deceive  us 
with  suggestions  of  a  state  and  pomp  of  which  his 
office  showed  no  trace.  Chosen  the  leader  of  the  fifty- 
seven  survivors  of  that  first  terrible  winter,  just  after 
the  Mayflower  had  left  them  in  the  spring  of  1621,  he 
saw  the  colony  grow  to  about  three  hundred  souls  by 
1630,  while  at  his  death  in  1657  it  may  have  numbered 
somewhat  more  than  four  thousand  inhabitants.1 
Never  an  imposing  station  from  a  worldly  point  of 
view,  the  Plymouth  governorship  was  a  post,  never- 
theless, of  great  responsibility,  for  its  successful  occu- 
pancy in  these  formative  years  in  which  Bradford  held 
it  involved  not  merely  the  solution  of  the  ordinary 
problems  of  pioneer  settlement  life,  but  the  establish- 
ment of  a  democratic  community  and  the  maintenance 
of  a  democratic  church  polity  under  circumstances  of 
constant  peril.  To  tell  with  any  fullness  what  Brad- 
ford did  would  be  to  give  an  outline  of  the  early  his- 
tory of  Plymouth.  That  is,  of  course,  impossible  in 
the  space  at  our  command.  But  we  may  glance  briefly 
at  four  or  five  of  the  more  important  services  that 
Bradford  rendered  to  the  colony  of  which  he  was 
Governor. 

One  conspicuous  service,  then,  was  the  tiding  of  the 
colony  over  the  trying  period  of  its  beginnings.  As 

1  Compare  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  ii.,  p.  6  ;  iii.,  p.  35. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  2J 

for  most  of  the  Mayflower  passengers,  so  for  Bradford, 
the  months  after  arrival  in  New  England  were  a  time 
of  grief.  His  wife  died  in  Provincetown  harbor  before 
the  landing;  and  he  was  himself  severely  ill  of  the 
scurvy  which  cost  half  the  company  their  lives  within 
the  first  year.  It  was  not  till  his  marriage,  in  the 
summer  of  1623,  to  Mrs.  Alice  Southworth,  who  as 
Alice  Carpenter  '  had  become  the  wife  of  one  of  his 
associates  at  Leyden  the  same  year  that  he  had  mar- 
ried Dorothy  May,  that  Bradford  was  able  to  have  the 
comfort  of  a  home.  Yet  under  these  discouragements 
he  showed  no  want  of  courage  or  lack  of  faith  in  the 
success  of  the  undertaking.2  But  perplexities  of  a 
public  nature  filled  these  years.  Perhaps  the  most 
pressing  was  the  crying  need  of  food.  With  scarce 
other  provisions  from  Europe  than  the  scant  supplies 
that  were  brought  in  the  May  flower  >  and  unprovided 
with  cattle  till  1624,  the  colony  for  the  first  two  or 
three  years  was  reduced  to  the  verge  of  starvation, 
except  just  after  the  autumn  harvest.  Bradford,3  with 
a  humor  characteristic  of  him,  after  recording  of  the 
summer  of  1623  that 

"  all  ther  victails  were  spente,  and  they  were  only  to  rest  on 
Gods  providence;  at  night  not  many  times  knowing  wher 
to  have  a  bitt  of  any  thing  ye  next  day," 

adds  that 

1  For  her  history,  see  Goodwin,  Pilgrim  Republic,  pp.  247-249. 

2  Witness  the  confident  tone  of  the,  so-called,  Mourfs  Relation. 

3  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  164. 


28  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

"  as  one  well  observed,  [they]  had  need  to  pray  that  God 
would  give  them  their  dayly  brade,  above  all  people  in  ye 
world." 

Of  the  same  year  he  notes: ' 

"  Many  were  ragged  in  aparell,  &  some  litle  beter  then 
halfe  naked.  .  .  .  But  for  food  they  were  all  alike,  save 
some  yf  had  got  a  few  pease  of  ye  ship  y*  was  last  hear. 
The  best  dish  they  could  presente  their  friends  with  was  a 
lobster,  or  a  peece  of  fish,  without  bread  or  anything  els 
but  a  cupp  of  fair  spring  water." 

One  readily  credits  his  further  statement a  that 

1 '  ye  long  continuance  of  this  diate,  and  their  labours  abroad, 
had  something  abated  ye  freshnes  of  their  former  com- 
plexion." 

Yet  this  peril  of  famine  was,  perhaps,  not  the  worst 
of  the  dangers  of  the  early  days.  The  Indians,  whose 
reported  barbarities  had  disquieted  the  Leyden  church 
when  the  journey  was  under  discussion,  were  a  source 
of  great  anxiety.  True,  one  of  the  most  surprising 
and  helpful  events  in  the  Pilgrim  beginnings  was  the 
arrival  in  little  Plymouth,  on  April  i,  1621,  of  Tis- 
quantum,  or  Squanto.  This  sole  survivor  of  the  for- 
mer Indian  inhabitants  of  the  township  had  gained 
acquaintance  with  the  English  speech  and  ways  by 
reason  of  an  enforced  residence  in  England  and  in 
Newfoundland  from  1614  to  1619,  and  he  now  became 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  175.  *Ibid. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  29 

their  instructor  in  planting  the  unfamiliar  corn 
and  their  serviceable  guide  and  interpreter.1  But 
Massasoit,  the  leader  of  the  Pokanokets,  Corbitant, 
chief  of  the  Pocassets,  and  Canonicus  of  the  Narragan- 
setts,  to  say  nothing  of  Wituwamat  and  his  more  hos- 
tile associates  of  the  Massachusetts  tribe,  had  to  be 
managed  with  great  skill  and  firmness  for  the  first 
three  years  of  the  colony's  existence,  if  the  struggling 
community  was  to  maintain  its  life.  Without  detract- 
ing at  all  from  the  honor  due  to  the  high  diplomatic 
and  medical  ability  of  Winslow,  or  the  prompt  execu- 
tive force  of  Standish,  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  the 
credit  for  the  satisfactory  relations  with  its  Indian 
neighbors  at  which  the  settlement  so  speedily  arrived 
belonged  to  the  wisdom  of  Bradford. 

But  famine  and  Indian  attack  were  not  the  only 
difficulties  through  which  Bradford  had  to  pilot  the 
infant  colony.  Perils  from  his  own  countrymen 
were  probably  greater  dangers  than  either.  Thomas 
Weston,  treasurer  of  the  London  partners  in  the  Plym- 
outh enterprise,  and,  more  than  any  other  man  not 
a  Pilgrim,  responsible  for  the  sending  out  of  the  May- 
flower, had  looked  upon  the  Plymouth  settlement 
simply  as  a  money-making  enterprise.  The  inevitable 
failure  to  pay  prompt  dividends  turned  him  from  a 
grasping  and  grudging  supporter  of  the  Pilgrims  into 

1  Compare  Mourfs  Relation  in  Young,  pp.  190,  191  ;  Bradford,  Hist., 
pp.  114-155  ;  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Three  Episodes  of  Massachusetts 
History,  pp.  23-44. 


30  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

an  open  enemy.  In  1622  Weston  sent  out  a  trading 
expedition  of  his  own,  which,  after  testing  the  hospi- 
tality of  Plymouth  to  the  utmost,  settled  in  unruly 
fashion  at  Wessagusset,  on  Boston  Bay.  Resolved 
not  to  burden  his  colony  with  wives  and  children, 
Weston  gathered  together  a  company  of  adventurers 
of  no  character,  who,  in  spite  of  their  boasts,  were 
soon  in  such  straits  that  they  were  only  saved  by  the 
intervention  of  the  Pilgrims,  after  having  been  the 
cause  of  frightful  peril  to  Plymouth  from  the  Indians 
whom  their  ill-treatment  exasperated.  No  higher  tes- 
timony could  be  had  to  the  efficiency  of  the  Pilgrim 
colony  under  Bradford's  administration  than  its  ability 
not  only  to  defend  itself  but  to  rescue  those  who  had 
at  first  claimed  to  have  such  superiority  to  it.1 

Nor  were  this  peril  from  Weston's  adventurers,  and 
that  from  Thomas  Morton  and  his  associates  in  riotous 
proceedings  at  Mount  Wollaston  in  1628, 2  the  only  dan- 
gers from  their  own  countrymen  which  the  colonists  en- 
countered. We  often  think  of  the  population  of  Plym- 
outh itself  as  homogeneous,  devoted  heart  and  soul  to 
the  advancement  of  the  religious  purpose  which  ani- 
mated the  Leyden  emigrants.  But  such  was  by  no 
means  the  case.  The  colony  was  founded  by  a  joint 
partnership,  that  of  London  merchant  speculators, 
who,  moved  by  hope  of  profit,  furnished  most  of 

1  Bradford,  Hist.,  pp.  137-160;  Adams,  Three  Episodes,  i.,  pp.  45- 
104.  2  Bradford,  ibid.,  pp.  283-292  ;  Adams,  ibid.,  pp.  162-208. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  31 

the  money  (in  all  some  £7000), l  and  of  the  real  Pil- 
grims. Both  contributed  men  at  the  beginning  and 
sent  reinforcements  during  the  first  few  years,  but  the 
quality  of  these  respective  contributions  was  very  dis- 
similar, religion  being  the  dominant  motive  with  the 
Pilgrims  proper,  trade  with  their  merchant  partners. 
Hence  the  strange  mixture  of  emigrants  that  Bradford 
notices,2  for  instance,  in  speaking  of  the  arrival  of  the 
Anne  in  July,  1623,  some  of  her  passengers  "  being 
very  usefull  persons,  and  became  good  members  of  ye 
body  .  .  .  and  some  were  so  bad,  as  they  were 
faine  to  be  at  charge  to  send  them  home  againe  ye  next 
year."  The  consequence  was  that  the  dominance  of 
Pilgrim  principles,  even  in  the  colony  itself,  was  main- 
tained for  a  time  with  difficulty.  This  difficulty  was 
much  increased  when  the  London  merchants,  in  their 
desire  to  minimize  those  Separatist  features  of  the  col- 
ony which  they  fancied  were  interfering  with  its  growth 
as  a  trading  settlement,  sent  over  John  Lyford,  a  Puri- 
tan minister  of  the  Church  of  England,  with  intent, 
as  the  event  proved,  to  modify  the  religious  institu- 
tions of  Plymouth  into  something  more  satisfactory  to 
the  majority  of  Englishmen.  Lyford  at  first  appeared 
attached  to  the  Congregational  worship  of  the  commu- 
nity and  was  consulted  in  public  concerns,  but  he 
soon  had  the  support  of  certain  disaffected  elements  in 

1  Arber,  Pilgrim  Fathers,  p.  320,  from  John  Smith,  Gen.  Hist,  of 
Virginia,  vi.,  p.  247.  2  Hist.  Ptim.  Plant.,  p.  171. 


32  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

the  colony,  notably  of  John  Oldham,  and  it  was  not 
long  before  he  and  his  friends  "  set  up  a  publick  meet- 
ing aparte,  on  ye  Lords  day."  '  Here,  then,  was  the 
introduction  of  a  religious  division  which  would  trans- 
plant to  the  struggling  colony  the  controversies  of  the 
mother  country.  It  was  a  difficult  situation  that  Brad- 
ford was  called  to  face,  complicated  as  it  was  by  res- 
tiveness  under  civil  control;  but  he  met  it  with  skill 
and  courage,  while  Lyford's  own  want  of  character 
gave  Bradford  the  decided  advantage.  Bradford's 
opening  of  Lyford's  letters  home  to  the  disaffected 
merchant  partners  in  London  was  undoubtedly  high- 
handed, but  his  facing  Oldham  and  Lyford  in  open 
town  meeting  was  crowned  with  the  success  which  his 
boldness  deserved,  and  made  the  Leyden  emigrants 
from  this  early  summer  of  1624  wholly  masters  of  the 
internal  affairs  of  Plymouth.2 

The  frustration  by  Bradford  of  this  attempt  to 
change  the  religious  and  political  status  of  the  Pilgrim 
colony  led  to  the  wellnigh  complete  alienation  of  the 
already  disgruntled  London  partners  in  the  enterprise, 
and  became  the  occasion  of  yet  another  service  ren- 
dered by  him  to  the  community  of  which  he  was  the 
executive  head.  That  partnership  had  never  been 
satisfactory.  The  terms  exacted  of  the  Pilgrims  were 
onerous,  and  the  expectations  of  the  merchants  were 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  209. 

2  Compare  Goodwin,  Pilgrim  Republic,  pp.  259-276. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  33 

wildly  extravagant.  There  was  never  any  complete 
community  of  goods  at  Plymouth,  but  at  the  beginning 
of  the  enterprise,  by  reason  of  the  joint  partnership  of  all 
in  it — both  of  emigrants  who  labored  and  of  merchants 
who  furnished  the  supplies — the  colonists  drew  food 
and  tools  and  clothing  from  a  common  store,  and 
turned  into  the  same  common  treasury  the  results  of 
their  labor.  In  fact,  it  was  an  excellent  example  of 
the  carrying  into  actual  practice  among  a  people,  the 
majority  of  whom  were  God-fearing  and  conscientious 
in  high  degree,  of  the  principles  advocated  by  many 
of  the  more  moderate  of  modern  socialists.  But  it  did 
not  operate  well.  It  caused  friction  at  many  points, 
and  broke  down,  interestingly  enough,  as  a  system 
of  efficient  production.  People  worked  under  it. 
There  were  as  few  drones  at  Plymouth  as  in  any  com- 
munity ever  known.  But,  as  the  event  proved,  the 
colonists  thus  associated  did  not  work  enough  to  pro- 
duce a  result  from  their  labors  sufficient  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  community.  The  first  break  came  in 
1623,  at  the  height  of  the  famine  of  which  mention  has 
already  been  made.  The  communitary  methods  of 
farming  were  not  producing  a  sufficiency  of  food,  and 
therefore  Bradford,  with  the  consent  of  his  associates, 
reluctantly  directed  that  in  this  one  particular  the 
communitary  rule  should  be  set  aside  and  that  each 
should  plant,  till,  and  possess  corn  as  he  saw  fit.  The 
result  was  so  marked  an  increase  in  production  that 


34  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

after  that  harvest  Plymouth  was  never  seriously 
threatened  with  extinction  by  starvation.  Bradford  l 
gives  as  the  reason,  that  the  plan  of  individual 
ownership 

"  made  all  hands  very  industrious,  so  as  much  more  come 
was  planted  then  other  waise  would  have  bene  by  any 
means  ye  Govr  or  any  other  could  use,  and  saved  him  a 
great  deall  of  trouble,  and  gave  farr  better  contente.  The 
women  now  wente  willingly  into  ye  feild,  and  tooke  their 
litle-ons  with  them  to  set  corne,  which  before  would  aledg 
weaknes,  and  inabilitie;  whom  to  have  compelled  would 
have  bene  thought  great  tiranie  and  oppression." 

And  Bradford  2  expressed  the  judgment  of  the  com- 
munitary  system  in  general,  as  experienced  at  Plym- 
outh, that  it 

"  was  found  to  breed  much  confusion  &  discontent,  and 
retard  much  imploymet  that  would  have  been  to  their  bene- 
fite  and  comforte.  For  ye  yong-men  that  were  most  able 
and  fitte  for  labour  &  service  did  repine  that  they  should 
spend  their  time  &  streingth  to  worke  for  other  mens  wives 
and  children,  with  out  any  recompence.  The  strong,  or 
man  of  parts,  had  no  more  in  devission  of  victails  &  cloaths, 
then  he  that  was  weake  and  not  able  to  doe  a  quarter  ye  other 
could;  this  was  thought  injuestice.  The  aged  and  graver 
men  to  be  ranked  and  equalised  in  labours,  and  victails, 
cloaths,  &c.,  with  ye  meaner  &  yonger  sorte,  thought  it 
some  indignite  &  disrespect  unto  them.  And  for  mens 
wives  to  be  commanded  to  doe  servise  for  other  men,  as 
dresing  their  meate,  washing  their  cloaths,  &c.,  they  deemd 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  162.  2  Ibid.,  p.  163. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  35 

it  a  kind  of  slaverie,  neither  could  many  husbands  well 
brooke  it." 

The  stage  was  small  and  the  experience  brief,  I 
grant;  but  it  was  experience,  and  that,  too,  under 
favorable  conditions ;  and  a  page  of  recorded  experi- 
ence is  more  truly  illuminative  than  a  library  shelf  of 
speculation,  however  picturesque  or  warm-hearted,  as 
to  the  possible  workings  of  systems  of  society  of  which 
we  have  no  actual  knowledge. 

The  once  seemingly  necessary  yoking  of  the  Ley- 
den  pilgrims  with  the  London  merchants,  which  had 
been  the  cause  of  this  remarkable  experiment,  had 
proved  thoroughly  unsatisfactory  to  all  concerned  by 
the  time  of  Lyford's  downfall,  and  that  collapse  rap- 
idly hastened  the  termination  of  the  partnership.  In 
1626,  the  remaining  London  merchant  partners  sold 
out  their  interests  to  the  Plymouth  colonists  for  .£1800, 
to  be  paid  in  nine  annual  installments.  The  colony 
thus  obtained  its  independence;  but,  to  make  it  pos- 
sible, Bradford  and  seven  of  his  associates  bound  them- 
selves personally  for  its  payment.1 

Bradford's  services  to  the  religious  system  which  he 
held  dear  were  considerable.  Till  1629  the  Pilgrim 
church  stood  alone,  sole  representative  of  Congrega- 
tionalism in  the  New  World.  But  in  1628  the  van- 
guard of  the  great  Puritan  immigration  which  was  to 
possess  most  of  New  England  reached  Salem  under 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  pp.  252-257. 


36  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

the  leadership  of  John  Endicott.  He  and  his  associ- 
ates, like  the  early  New  England  Puritans  generally, 
looked  with  disfavor  on  the  Plymouth  Separatists. 
Though  the  Puritans  of  the  emigration  rejected  the 
hierarchy,  the  service,  and  the  discipline  of  the  Church 
of  England,  they  had  no  intention  of  separating  from 
that  body,  and  they  condemned  those  who  did  so. 
But  neighborliness  brought  better  knowledge.  Dr. 
Samuel  Fuller,  the  godly  deacon  and  physician  of 
Plymouth,  ministered  to  the  sick  of  Endicott's  com- 
pany, and  talked  polity  with  the  well;  and  when  Hig- 
ginson  and  Skelton  and  a  large  body  of  settlers  with 
them  reached  Salem  in  the  early  summer  of  1629,  they 
found  Endicott  and  his  associates  not  quite  ready  to 
approve  Plymouth  Separatism,  but  well  pleased  with 
Plymouth's  faith  and  order.  So  it  came  about  that 
when  Bradford  heard  that  the  Salem  people  had  organ- 
ized a  church  of  experimental  believers  in  Christ,  and 
had  chosen  part  of  its  officers  according  to  what  Plym- 
outh deemed  the  Scriptural  appointment,  and  had 
fixed  a  day  for  further  election  and  ordination,1  he 
came  in  one  of  the  little  boats,  in  which  the  colonists 
then  ventured  along  the  coast,  from  Plymouth  to 
Salem  with  a  few  companions,  and,  for  the  first  time 
on  this  new  continent,  gave  the  "  right  hand  of  fellow- 
ship "  to  the  new  gathered  congregation.2  The  head 

'See  Charles  Gott's  letter  in  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  pp.  316, 
317.  2  Morton,  New  Englands  Memoriall,  p.  99,  ed.  1855. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  37 

of  the  older  colony  thus  thought  it  well  worth  his 
while  to  welcome  with  Christian  sympathy  the  Puritan 
newcomers  to  New  England,  and  not  a  little  of  the 
ease  and  readiness  with  which  emigrated  Puritanism 
was  led  to  organize  its  churches  substantially  on  the 
Plymouth  model  was  due  to  the  welcome  and  example 
of  Bradford  and  Fuller. 

Time  allows  us  no  further  glance  at  Bradford's 
manifold  public  activities  for  the  good  of  the  colony 
of  which  he  was  the  civil  head,  nor  at  his  relations  to 
other  settlers  in  New  England,  illustrated  in  his  presi- 
dency, for  some  two  years,1  of  the  joint  body  of 
Commissioners  which,  from  1643  onward  till  after  his 
death,  represented  the  united  interests  of  the  four 
Congregational  colonies.  But  one  private  and  un- 
official feature  of  his  services^to  the  colony  of  his  resi- 
dence cannot  be  passed  by,  and  that  is  his  writings. 
Were  it  not  for  Bradford's  Relation,  History,  and  Let- 
ters, little  indeed  would  it  be  that  we  should  know  of 
Plymouth's  beginnings.  He  not  merely  wisely  directed 
his  associates  while  they  lived — he  found  time  and  in- 
clination to  preserve  their  memories  and  deeds  for  per- 
petual remembrance.  His  chief  work  is,  of  course, 
his  History,  begun  about  1630,  and  continued  till  the 
close  of  1646.  That  History  has  had  a  more  picturesque 
fate  than  that  of  any  other  American  manuscript. 
Kept  for  many  years  in  the  family  of  Bradford's  son, 

1  1648  and  1656. 


3  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

William,  and  grandson,  John,  it  was  for  some  time  in 
the  hands  of  that  sturdy  Puritan,  Judge  Samuel  Sewall. 
Hence,  with  the  consent  of  its  third  American  owner  of 
the  Bradford  name,  it  passed,  apparently  in  1728,  into 
the  New  England  Library  collected  by  that  most  gifted 
as  well  as  most  patient  of  early  students  of  our  begin- 
nings, Thomas  Prince,  pastor  of  the  Old  South  Church 
in  Boston.1  Deposited  in  the  tower  of  the  Old  South 
Church,  it  was  well  known  as  late  as  1767;  but  during 
the  commotions  incident  to  the  Revolutionary  struggle 
it  disappeared,  in  what  precise  way  seems  impossible 
to  discover,  to  be  mourned  as  hopelessly  lost.  The 
happy  identification  in  1855,  by  a  comparatively  minor 
Massachusetts  historian,  of  certain  quotations  from 
manuscript  sources  in  an  English  book  already  nine 
years  in  its  second  edition,2  at  length  revealed  to  Ameri- 
can investigators  the  fact, — not  very  much  to  the  credit 
of  their  breadth  of  reading  be  it  confessed,  since  the 
fact  had  been  published  in  yet  another  English  book 
seven  years  before,3 — that  the  desired  volume  was  in  the 
library  of  the  Bishop  of  London  at  Fulham.  Printed 
in  1856,  it  became  at  once,  as  it  had  been  to  Morton, 
Hubbard,  Mather,  Prince,  and  Hutchinson,  the  prime 
source  on  the  beginnings  of  Plymouth  colony;  and  so 
permanent  is  the  interest  it  excites  that  a  reproduction 
in  photographic  facsimile  was  issued  as  recently  as 

1  See  Preface  to  the  1856  edition  of  Bradford,  Hist.  Plim.  Plant., 
x.,  xi.  2  Ibid.,  iv. 

3  Dexter,  Bibliography,  in  Cong,  as  Seen,  under  No.  5791. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  39 

1896.  Of  the  honors  of  its  home-coming  on  May  26, 

1897,  brought  by  an  ambassador  of  the  United  States 
who  had  in  a  peculiar  measure  won  the  good-will  of 
the   English  people,  and  welcomed  by  the  Governor 
and  the  senior  Senator  of  Massachusetts  in  the  presence 
of  the  Legislature  of  the  commonwealth,  it  is  only  need- 
ful to  remind  you.     The  newspaper  descriptions  of  that 
scene,    though    too    often    misnaming   the    recovered 
manuscript  the  "  Log  of  the  Mayflower"  must  be  dis- 
tinct in  all  our  memories. 

Besides  his  History,  Bradford's  busy  pen  produced 
other  work  of  value.  The  graphic  account  of  the  in- 
ception of  the  Plymouth  settlement,  published  at 
London,  in  1622,  and  generally  known  as  Mourt's 
Relation,  was  largely  his  work,  though  with  the  as- 
sistance of  his  colleague  in  the  leadership  of  Plymouth 
affairs,  Edward  Winslow.1  In  more  advanced  life, 
about  the  year  1648,  Bradford  put  into  the  form  of  a 
brief  dialogue  his  information  and  his  recollections 
concerning  the  beginnings  of  Congregationalism  and 
its  leaders  in  England  and  Holland.  Regarding  many 
of  these  personages  and  events  we  know  much  more 
than  he,  thanks  to  the  labors  of  Dr.  Dexter  and  other 
students  of  Congregational  beginnings.  It  may  be, 
as  has  been  charged,  that  his  judgment  of  men  was 
occasionally  over  kindly.2  But  with  all  its  brevity  and 

1  Young,  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims,  p.  115. 

2  £.  g. ,  by  Arber,  Pilgrim  Fathers,  passim, 


40  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

limitations,  the  Dialogue  gives  us  many  hints  and  pic- 
tures of  value.  The  volume  in  which  Bradford  copied 
his  more  important  letters  was  discovered  about  a  hun- 
dred years  ago,  in  grievously  mutilated  condition,  in  a 
baker's  shop  in  Halifax.1  Besides  these  more  import- 
ant writings,  and  some  Hebrew  exercises,  which  have 
come  down  in  more  or  less  perfect  form  to  our  time, 
Bradford  left,  and  Prince  certainly  handled,  several 
smaller  treatises  and  records,  the  character  of  one  of 
which,  as  described  in  Bradford's  will,  throws  an  amus- 
ing light  on  a  trait  markedly  characteristic  of  the  early 
settlers  of  New  England,  the  disposition  to  write  what 
they  believed  to  be  poetry.  Bradford  valued  his  com- 
positions in  rhyme,  for  he  said  to  his  executors,  "  I 
commend  to  you  a  little  book  with  a  black  cover, 
wherein  there  is  a  word  to  Plymouth,  a  word  to  Bos- 
ton, and  a  word  to  New  England,  with  sundry  useful 
verses."2  There  is  nothing  in  such  rhymes  as  have 
survived  to  give  the  impression  of  any  loss  to  New 
England  letters  by  the  perishing  of  these  compositions, 
and  in  his  deficiency  in  real  poetic  gift  this  author  was 
no  exception  among  the  divines,  magistrates,  and 
founders  of  colonies,  who  so  generally  attempted 
poetic  expression. 

Bradford's  prose  style  is  simple,  direct,  dignified. 
Often  there  is  a  kind  of  eloquence  in  his  straight- 
forwardness and  force.  Oftener  there  is  a  touch  of 

1  Goodwin,  Pilgrim  Repttblic,  xiv.  2  Ibid.,  p.  457. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  41 

almost  unconscious  pathos;1  as  of  one  who  had  en- 
dured and  suffered  much.  Sometimes,  though  rarely, 
there  appears  a  flash  of  grim  humor,  that  makes  you 
feel  him  to  have  been  not  without  appreciation  of  the 
incongruous  and  the  absurd.2  To  a  modern  historian 
his  paucity  of  definite  dates,  and  his  occasional  substi- 
tution of  indefinite  generalities  for  the  concrete  facts 
we  desire  is  a  source  of  regret;3  but  his  meaning  is 
rarely  doubtful.  His  writings  are  marked  throughout 
by  courage  and  cheer.  They  give  us  the  best  picture 
of  the  man  himself;  the  modest,  kindly,  grateful,  gen- 
erous, honorable  leader  in  a  great  enterprise.  Shrewd 
and  sober  of  judgment,  profoundly  religious  with  a  re- 
ligion that  masters  his  actions  rather  than  seeks  ex- 
pression in  words,  self-forgetful,  without  cant,  and 
with  far  less  superstition  than  many  of  his  associates, 
it  is  a  sweet,  strong,  noble  character  that  has  uncon- 
sciously written  itself  in  the  pages  of  his  History.  You 
feel  that  the  man  whose  native  generosity  of  spirit 
prompted  him  to  give  a  passing  Jesuit  a  dinner  of  fish 
of  a  Friday,4  who  took  on  himself  a  great  share  of  the 
debt  which  weighed  on  the  whole  community,  who  re- 
fused to  profit  by  a  charter  which,  if  strictly  enforced, 
would  have  given  large  pecuniary  gain  to  him  and  to 
his  family,  and  would  even  have  legally  allowed  him 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  e.  g.,  pp.  13,  131.         2  Ibid.,  e.  g.,  134,  135,  164. 

3  E.  g.,  his  account  of  the  beginnings  of  the  Pilgrim  church. 

4  Gabriel  Druillettes  in  1650  ;  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  ii., 
p.  308. 


42  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

to  treat  his  fellow  colonists  as  his  tenants,1  was  one 
who  not  merely  deserved  the  respect  but  the  love  of 
his  associates,  and  you  can  appreciate  their  unflagging 
desire  that  he  should  be  their  Governor. 

Bradford's  last  years  were  not  without  their  trials. 
Plymouth  was  at  best  a  hard  place  in  which  to  obtain 
a  livelihood ;  its  scanty  soil,  its  limited  pasturage,  its 
remoteness  from  the  rivers  which  were  the  main  avenues 
of  access  to  trade  with  the  Indians,  and  its  disadvan- 
tages as  a  commercial  port,  all  led  to  a  scattering  of  its 
early  settlers,  as  soon  as  the  prohibition  of  removal  was 
raised,  in  1632;  indeed  the  dispersion  had  begun  even 
before.  Plymouth,  though  remaining  the  capital, 
steadily  waned,  and  Bradford  had  the  sorrow  of  mem- 
bership in  what  must  be  termed,  I  think,  a  decaying 
church.  The  strength  of  the  old  Mayflower  congrega- 
tion was  largely  drawn  elsewhere  in  the  colony.  Nor 
could  the  ministry  of  Ralph  Smith,  who  laid  down  in 
1636,  as  Bradford  says,  "  partly  by  his  own  willingness 
.  .  .  and  partly  at  the  desire,  and  by  ye  perswa- 
sion,  of  others,"  *  the  pastoral  office  which  he  had  as- 
sumed in  1629,  or  of  the  much  abler  John  Reynor, 
whose  ministry  continued  nearly  to  Bradford's  death, 
compare  in  spiritual  edification  with  that  of  Robinson, 
the  pastor  of  Bradford's  young  manhood,  or  even  of 
Brewster,  the  ruling  elder  who  was  essentially  the  pastor 

1  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  113  ;  Goodwin,  Pilgrim  Republic,  pp.  337, 
338.  .  *  Hist,  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  418. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  43 

of  the  first  nine  years  of  the  colony.  Bradford  made 
the  spiritual  good  of  the  little  commonwealth  his  first 
concern,  and  his  last  days  were  distressed  by  what  he 
deemed  the  neglect  of  the  people  over  whom  he  was 
Governor  to  provide  the  pecuniary  means  for  securing 
a  more  able  ministry  than  the  scattered  towns  of  the 
colony  enjoyed.  He  would  have  had  them  raise  the 
salaries  of  their  ministers  by  a  tax,  as  in  the  other 
Congregational  colonies,  instead  of  depending  on  the 
precarious  device  of  voluntary  contributions.1  But, 
while  he  worried  about  many  matters,  nothing  could 
disturb  the  essential  serenity  of  his  life,  or  his  trust  in 
God.  Though  his  physical  frame  gradually  weakened 
throughout  his  last  winter,  his  confidence  in  the  divine 
mercy  toward  him  remained  unshaken,  and  found  ex- 
pression in  a  triumphant  declaration  to  his  friends  the 
day  before  his  death,  "  that  the  good  Spirit  of  God 
had  given  him  a  pledge  of  his  happiness  in  another 
world,  and  the  first  fruits  of  his  eternal  glory."12  He 
died  May  9,  1657. 

They  bore  him  to  his  rest  up  the  steep  hillside  to 
the  wind-swept  top,  whence  the  eye  glances  over  the 
little  town  below,  and  on  to  the  distant  slope  where 
Bradford's  helpful  comrade,  Standish,  made  his  later 
home  ;  or  looks  out  seaward,  past  the  Gurnet,  guarding 
the  harbor,  over  the  waves  once  plowed  by  the  May- 
flower ;  till  it  rests,  in  clear  weather,  on  Cape  Cod, 

1  Goodwin,  Pilgrim  Republic,  p.  458.      2  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  114. 


44  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 

where  Bradford  first  stepped  upon  American  soil. 
From  that  place  of  thronging  memories  you  can  com- 
pass the  scenes  of  most  of  his  life  in  that  raw,  new 
wilderness.  There  below  you  he  planted  his  garden ; 
there  at  the  foot  of  the  steep  southward  slope  runs  the 
town  brook  as  it  did  when,  in  the  springtime  of  Brad- 
ford's first  election,  Squanto  taught  the  Pilgrims  the 
value  of  its  then  abundant  fish  ; 1  up  the  steep  hill-path 
toward  you,  to  the  structure  at  once  fort  and  meeting- 
house that  then  crowned  its  top,  Bradford  used  to 
come  to  Sunday  worship,  in  his  long  robe,  with  Brew- 
ster  and  Standish  walking  in  state  on  either  hand.2 
And  here,  somewhere  beneath  your  feet,  they  laid 
him,  without  a  word  of  prayer  or  a  verse  of  comfort 
from  God's  Word,  for  such  was  to  be  the  unbroken 
custom  of  New  England  till  a  generation  after  his 
burial ; 3  yet  as  Morton  4  says : 

"  with  the  greatest  solemnities  that  the  jurisdiction  to 
which  he  belonged  was  in  a  capacity  to  perform,  many 
deep  sighs,  as  well  as  loud  volleys  of  shot  declaring  that 
the  people  were  no  less  sensible  of  their  own  loss,  who  were 
surviving,  than  mindful  of  the  worth  and  honor  of  him  that 
was  deceased." 

Bradford's  own  pen  has  recorded,  in  halting  verse,  his 
sense  of  the  divine  guidance  in  his  life: 5 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  121. 

2  Letter  of  De  Rasieres,  in  Palfrey,  i.,  p.  227. 

3  Till  1685.     Even  seventy-five  years  after  Bradford's  death  prayer  at 
funerals  was  by  no  means  universal. 

*  New  Englands  Memoriall,  p.  176,  1855. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  45 

From  my  years  young  in  days  of  youth, 
God  did  make  known  to  me  his  truth, 
And  call'd  me  from  my  native  place 
For  to  enjoy  the  means  of  grace. 
In  wilderness  he  did  me  guide, 
And  in  strange  lands  for  me  provide. 
In  fears  and  wants,  through  weal  and  woe, 
A  Pilgrim  passed  I  to  and  fro." 

It  was  this  deep  and  abiding  trust  in  God  and  willing- 
ness to  follow  God's  truth  as  he  understood  it  that  made 
Bradford  what  he  was.  His  talents  were  undoubtedly 
great,  his  administrative  ability  conspicuous,  his  pa- 
tience wellnigh  unfailing;  he  was  a  man  whom  other 
men  trusted  and  revered  ;  —  but  the  power  which  led 
him  through  the  vicissitudes  of  his  changeful  life  was 
that  of  an  unreserved  consecration  to  the  service  of 
God.  The  covenant  of  the  Congregational  church  of 
which  he  was  a  member  from  its  organization  at 
Scrooby,  through  its  Amsterdam  and  Leyden  exile, 
and  in  its  Plymouth  transplantation  till  his  death,  had 
pledged  him  and  his  associates  l 

"  to  walke  in  all  his  [God's]  wayes,  made  known,  or  to  be 
made  known  unto  them,  according  to  their  best  endeavours, 
whatsoever  it  should  cost  them." 

He  kept  this  pledge,  and,  in  so  doing,  he  became  a 
noble  example  of  a  Christian  layman  of  the  early  days 
of  Congregationalism,  and  one  whose  name  Congre- 
gationalists  delight  to  honor. 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  13. 


JOHN  COTTON 


47 


II. 

JOHN    COTTON 

THERE  was  occasion  to  point  out,  in  the  first  lec- 
ture of  this  course,  the  steps  which  gradually  led 
such  a  company  as  that  accustomed  to  gather  in  Brew- 
ster's  home  in  the  Scrooby  manor-house  to  separation 
from  the  Church  of  England.  It  was  seen  that  Clyfton 
and  Brewster  labored  long  within  the  Establishment  to 
secure  for  their  district  of  England  an  earnest,  edu- 
cated, preaching  ministry,  and  such  a  degree  of  in- 
struction and  discipline  as  would  give  a  new  spiritual 
tone  to  the  inhabitants  of  its  parishes.  It  was  noted, 
furthermore,  that  John  Robinson  probably  came  to 
the  region  of  Scrooby  and  Austerfield  as  a  preacher  in 
the  employ  of  those  still,  nominally  at  least,  within  the 
Church  of  England,  and  that  it  was  not  till  a  year  or 
two  after  Robinson's  Lincolnshire  ministry  began  that 
the  little  company  to  which  Bradford  belonged,  and  of 
which  Robinson  had  become  a  conspicuous  leader, 
withdrew  from  the  Establishment  under  the  stimulus 
of  ecclesiastical  interference  with  their  attempt  to  in- 
troduce reforms,  being  further  led  to  this  withdrawal,  as 

they  believed,  by  truer  views  of  the  Biblical  teaching  as 
4  49 


50  JOHN  COTTON 

to  what  a  church  should  be.  But  this  extreme  measure, 
which  Bradford  described  as  a  shaking  off  of  the 
'  yoake  of  antichristian  bondage,"  1  seemed  far  too 
radical  to  all  save  a  few  of  the  people  of  England.  To 
most  of  those  who  sought  a  further  reformation,  the 
Separatists  who  denied  the  churchly  character  of  the 
Establishment  were  as  objectionable  as  the  bishops 
who  prevented  reform.  Yet  as  the  Puritans  read  their 
Bibles,  under  the  light  that  came  from  Geneva,  they 
drew  much  the  same  conclusions  that  the  Separatists 
did  as  to  the  lack  of  warrant  for  existing  diocesan  epis- 
copacy ;  the  desirability  that  a  ^cpngregation  should 
have  a  voice  in. the  selection  of  its  minister;  the  bond- 
age, and  as  they  deemed  it,  the  perversion  of  the  cere- 
monies and  worship  of  the  Church ;  and  the  wrongful- 
ness  of  a  system  which  allowed  persons  of  unworthy 
life  practically  unrestrained  access  to  sacraments  ad- 
ministered too  often  by  an  ignorant  and  unspiritual 
clergy. 

To  effect  the  amendment  of  these  ills  the  Puritans 
looked  to  governmental  action.  Hence,  no  sooner  had 
Elizabeth  passed  away  than  they  besought  her  suc- 
cessor, King  James  I.,  to  introduce  some  of  the 
changes  that  they  desired,  only  to  find  in  him  a  deter- 
mined supporter  of  a  system  so  consonant  with  his 
own  lofty  ideas  of  the  royal  prerogative.  But  other 
forces  than  royal  disfavor  opposed  Puritanism.  The 

1  Hist.  Plim.  Plant.,  p.  13. 


JOHN  COTTON  51 

old  Anglicanism  of  the  Elizabethan  period,  conspicu- 
ously represented  in  that  vigorous  opponent  of  Puritan- 
ism, Archbishop  Whitgift,  which  looked  upon  existing 
ecclesiastical  institutions  as  rinding  their  chief  warrant 
in  their  establishment  by  governmental  authority, 
gave  way  to  a  new  school,  largely  raised  up  by  the 
fierceness  of  the  Puritan  attack.  From  the  time  when, 
in  1589,  the  later  Archbishop  Bancroft  advanced  the 
theory  at  Paul's  Cross,  till  it  rose  in  William  Laud 
full-panoplied  to  contend  for  the  mastery  of  England, 
this  new  party  asserted  with  growing  positiveness 
that  episcopacy  and  apostolic  succession  were  essential 
to  the  existence  of  a  true  Church.  Arminian  specula- 
tions, too,  entered  England,  as  the  great  anti-Calvin- 
istic  controversy  in  Holland  ran  its  public  course  from 
1604  onward,  and  commended  themselves  to  many  of 
the  High  Church  party  by  reason  of  the  very  vigor  of 
the  Calvinism  of  the  Puritans.  So  that,  through  the 
first  three  decades  of  the  seventeenth  century,  while 
Puritanism  was  constantly  growing  in  the  number  of 
its  adherents  and  in  the  intensity  of  its  convictions, 
the  High  Church  party  grew,  also;  and,  aided  by  the 
royal  authority,  its  hand  fell  with  unabating  severity 
on  Puritan  offenders  of  English  ecclesiastical  laws — a 
severity  that  was  markedly  augmented  when  Laud 
became  Bishop  of  London  in  1628.  Neither  Puritans 
nor  Anglicans  were  seekers  for  religious  liberty  in  any 
modern  sense  of  the  phrase ;  but  the  Puritan  laid  pri- 


52  JOHN  COTTON 

mary  insistence  on  right  belief  and  strenuous  moral 
practice  as  judged  by  his  interpretation  of  the  Word  of 
God,  while  the  Anglican  emphasized  conformity  to  the 
ceremonies,  ritual,  and  hierarchy  established  by  law. 

If  Puritanism  found  no  favor  from  the  King,  it 
gained  increasing  approval  from  the  English  Parlia- 
ment as  the  reign  of  James  went  on,  not  only  by  reason 
of  the  general  growth  of  the  Puritan  party  in  the  land, 
but  because  two  Puritan  principles  taught  the  lesson 
of  constitutional  government  to  an  age  whose  more 
open  minds  were  ready  to  receive  it.  *  The  Puritan 
contention  that  a  minister  should  be  chosen  with  the 
rnn<^nt  nf  hifi  pQop!Qj  to  whom  he  was  thus  in  a  meas- 
ure responsible,  could  not  but  raise  in  some  minds  the 
query  whether  the  sovereign  himself  was  in  reality  the 
irresponsible  ruler  by  divine  right  that  the  Stuart 
kings  asserted.  The  Puritan  belief  that  no  law  of 
man  constrained  any  obedience  should  it  run  counter 
to  the  will  of  God  revealed  in  the  Scriptures,  similarly 
encouraged  resistance  to  arbitrary  enactments  by 
suggesting  that  all  statutes  must  approve  them- 
selves by  some  other  test  than  mere  imposition 
by  royal  authority.  But  Parliament  could  offer  no 
efficient  resistance  to  the  Stuart  absolutism  as  yet; 
and,  in  1629,  Charles  I.  dispensed  with  it  alto- 
gether, thenceforth  calling  no  session  of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  English  people  till  on  the  eve  of  the 
great  catastrophe  of  the  civil  war  eleven  years  later. 


JOHN   COTTON  53 

Baffled  and  harassed  by  the  growing  tyranny  of  the 
crown  and  the  increasing  oppression  by  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal authorities  that  the  crown  supported,  many  Puritans 
of  the  opening  years  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  despaired 
of  the  accomplishment  of  their  reforms  in  the  home 
land.  Led,  in  part,  by  the  success  of  the  Pilgrims  at 
Plymouth,  they  began  to  look  across  the  Atlantic. 
There,  in  the  wilderness,  they  might  plant  a  new  Eng- 
land where  the  Gospel  might  have  sway  in  a  purity  of 
teaching  and  administration  denied  it,  they  believed, 
in  the  land  of  their  birth.  And  so  the  great  emigra- 
tion began,  in  1628,  with  the  departure  of  Endicott 
and  his  associates  for  Salem ;  and  the  stream  flowed 
stronger  in  1629,  when  Higginson  and  Skelton  and 
their  fellow-colonists  followed  him  under  the  protection 
of  a  Company  now  provided  with  an  ample  royal  char- 
ter and  enlisting  widely  the  sympathies  of  English 
Puritanism;  till,  in  1630,  the  tide  ran  full,  carrying 
Winthrop,  Johnson,  Saltonstall,  Dudley,  Wilson, 
Phillips,  Ludlow,  Warham,  and  Maverick,  with  about 
a  thousand  beside,  across  the  sea,  and  leading  to  the 
immediate  settlement  of  Dorchester,  Charlestown, 
Boston,  and  Watertown.  Thenceforward  the  emigra- 
tion was  at  its  flood  till  the  great  political  changes, 
foreshadowed  by  the  summons  of  Parliament  once 
more  in  1640,  brought  it  to  a  sudden  end.  By  that 
time  more  than  twenty  thousand  people  had  transferred 
their  homes  to  New  England,  while  Connecticut,  New 


54  JOHN  COTTON 

Haven,  and  Rhode  Island  colonies  had  been  added  to 
Massachusetts  and  its  predecessor,  Plymouth. 

With  this  immigration  had  come  the  establishment 
of  churches  on  this  new  soil,  substantially  like  to  that 
of  Plymouth  in  organization  and  forms  of  worship,  the 
first  being  that  of  Salem  in  1629,  and  their  number, 
reaching  at  least  thirty-four  by  1640.  "  God  sifted  a 
whole  nation  that  He  might  send  choice  Grain  over 
into  this  Wilderness,"  said  William  Stoughton  in  1668" 
in  an  oft-quoted  phrase  describing  the  character  of 
these  founders.  They  were,  indeed,  a  picked  body  of 
men.  No  meaner  motive  and  no  less  noble  cause  could 
have  gathered  together  such  a  representation  of  what 
was  best  in  the  well-to-do,  sober,  intelligent,  God- 
fearing middle-class  population  of  England,  or  of  their 
leaders  in  spiritual  things.  But  I  think  we  shall  best 
comprehend  the  character  of  the  movement,  at  the 
general  story  of  which  we  have  just  glanced,  if  we  look 
at  it  through  the  biography  of  one  of  its  most  con- 
spicuous ministerial  leaders,  John_gQtton. 

Bradford  was  a  country  lad  and  of  farmer  parents; 
Cotton  was  town-born  and  the  son  of  a  member  of  one 
of  the  learned  professions.  Bradford's  opportunities 
for  education  were  fortuitous;  Cotton  enjoyed  as  good 
training  as  contemporary  England  afforded,  i  Born  in 
the  enterprising  market-town  of  Derby,  on  December 
4>  JS^S,1  the  son  of  Roland  Cotton,  a  lawyer  of  stren- 

1  Magnalia,  i.,    p.    253.    1853-5.       For   his  early  life,  see  also   the 


JO  PIN  COTTON  55 

uous  religious  life,  and  of  a  devotedly  Christian  mother, 
his  gifts  were  rapidly  developed  under  the  tuition  of  a 
schoolmaster  whom  his  grandson,  Cotton  Mather, 
designated  as  "  one  Mr.  Johnson,"  1  so  that,  "  in  the 
beginning  of  [his]  I3th  year/'-Xne  entered  the  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge  as  a  member  of  Trinity  College 3 
—  that  great  educational  foundation  whose  remote 
spiritual  dependence  we  have  already  seen  Austerfield 
to  be.  !What  the  youthful  collegian  there  found  of 
teaching  or  of  customs  has  been  described  by  no  one 
more  graphically  than  by  the  late  Dr.  Dexter,  pictur- 
ing from  this*  desk  the  similar  experiences  of  John 
Robinson.4  fcne  of  the  very  youngest  of  perhaps 
twenty-five  hundred  students,  Cotton  doubtless  shared 
with  three  associates  a  chamber  in  the  college  of  which 
he  was  a  member,  and  was  compelled  to  occupy  the 
trundle-bed  by  means  of  which  sleeping  accommoda- 
tions were  provided  for  two  of  the  occupants  of  the 
crowded  room.5  [At  six,  he  breakfasted  on  bread  and 
beer;  at  eleven,  ne  dined  on  a  bit  of  beef,  mutton,  or 
fish;  and  at  seven  he  supped  on  an  omelette.  J^is 
course  of  study  was  spent  chiefly  on  logic  and  philos- 
ophy, and  in  the  acquisition  of  Latin,  Greek,  and  He- 


more  valuable  sketch  of  CoftonHBy  KisTTnend,  Rev.  Samuel  Whiting, 
from  which  Mather  freely  drew,  printed  in  Young,  Chronicles  of  Massa- 
chusetts, pp.  419-430. 

1  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  254. 
^-2  Cotton,    Way  of  the  Congregational  Churches  Cleared,  p.  33.     1648. 

3  Whiting,  in  Young,  p.  420. 

4  Dexter,  Cong,  as  Seen,  pp.  365-370.  5  Ibid.,  p.  367. 


56  JOHN  COTTON 

brew — in  which  languages  there  is  abundant  evidence 
that  the  young  student  became  remarkably  proficient.1 
What  we  should  call  the  Freshman  year  was  appor- 
tioned to  Rhetoric  in  the  broad,  Roman  sense  of  the 
word;  Sophomore  and  Junior  years  were  called  years 
of  Logic,  and  Senior  year  that  of  Philosophy.  Fol- 
lowing, thus,  the  round  of  student  life,  Cotton  gradu- 
ated Bachelor  of  Arts  in  1602-3,  and  then  went  on  till 
he  received  his  Master  of  Arts  degree  at  Trinity  in 
1606* — just  as  the  Scrooby  church  of  which  Bradford 
was  a  member  was  being  organized.  This  second  de- 
gree implied  not  merely  further  study  along  the  lines 
already  four  years  pursued,  but  some  acquaintance  with 
Astronomy,  Perspective,  and  Divinity  as  well. 

Comfortably  supplied  with  money  from  the  earnings 
of  his  father's  successful  practice,  Cotton  vigorously 
followed  his  native  scholarly  bent.  His  own  college 
being  unable  to  choose  him  to  a  fellowship  by  reason 
of  a  temporary  embarrassment  of  its  funds,  he  obtained 
that  coveted  position  at  Emmanuel  College,  by  the 
successful  passage  of  an  examination  in  which  the  cru- 
cial test  was  as  to  his  proficiency  in  Hebrew.3  The 
institution  with  which  he  now  became  connected  had 
been  founded  by  that  zealous  Puritan  courtier  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  Sir  Walter  Mildmay,  shortly  before  Cotton's 

1  Whiting,  in  Young,  pp.  421,  422. 

2  Records  of  Trinity  College,  for  the  M.A.  cited  in  Ellis,  History  of 
the  First  Church  in  Boston,  p.  27.      1 88 1. 

3  Whiting,  ibid. 


I 

JOHN  COTTON  57 

birth,  and  was  at  this  time  the  most  Puritanly  inclined 
of  the  colleges  of  the  then  prevailingly  Puritan  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge.  Thomas  Hooker,  Samuel 
Stone,  Thomas  Shepard,  and  John  Harvard,  to  men- 
tion no  other  names  honored  in  the  history  of  early 
New  England,  were  also  of  its  sons.  But  it  is  curi- 
ously illustrative  of  the  mutability  of  institutions  in 
this  changing  world  that  Archbishop  Sancroft  and  the 
non-juror  William  Law,1  to  whom  Wesley  was  greatly 
indebted,  looked  to  Emmanuel  as  their  alma  mater, 
and  were  as  representative  of  its  later  position,  at  least 
in  their  High  Churchism,  as  Cotton  was  of  its  earlier 
Puritanism.  The  head  of  Emmanuel,  during  Cotton's 
residence,  was  Laurence  Chaderton,  who,  as  one  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Puritan  party  in  the  country  at  large, 
had  appeared  before  King  James  at  Hampton  Court  in 
1604,  while  Cotton  was  studying  for  his  second  degree, 
and  vainly  urged  the  sovereign  to  grant  the  reforms 
which  the  Puritans  desired.  And  under  Chaderton's 
leadership,  spite  of  the  statutes  of  uniformity,  public 
worship  at  Emmanuel  had  taken  on  an  almost  Genevan 
simplicity.* 

Into  this  atmosphere,  strongly  charged  with  Puritan 
thought,  the  youthful  Cotton  came;  and  here  at  Em- 
manuel he  experienced  a  real  spiritual  awakening.  Its 


1  Hort,   The  Christian  Ecclesia,  p.  296.      1897. 

9  See  a  report  to  Laud,  of  date  September  23,  1633,  in  Cooper, 
Annals  of  Cambridge,  iii.,  p.  283.  The  state  of  affairs  was  doubtless 
much  the  same  twenty-five  years  earlier. 


58  JOHN  COTTON 

first  public  manifestation  may  be  described  in  the 
words  of  Cotton's  parishioner  in  old  Boston,  and  min- 
isterial neighbor  in  New  England,  Samuel  Whiting, 
first  pastor  of  Lynn,  Mass.,  who  entered  Emmanuel 
just  as  Cotton  left  it: l 


"  The  first  time  that  he  became  famouslKroughout  the 
whole  University,  was  from  a  funeral  oration  which  he 
made  in  Latin  [in  1608]  for  Dr.  Some,  who  was  Master  of 
Peter  House;  which  was  so  elegantly  and  oratoriously  per- 
formed, that  he  was  much  admired  for  it  by  the  greatest 
wits  in  the  University.  After  that,  being  called  to  preach 
at  the  University  Church,  called  St.  Mary's,  he  was  yet 
more  famous  for  that  sermon,  and  very  much  applauded  by 
all  the  gallant  scholars  for  it.  After  that,  being  called  to 
preach  there  again,  God  helped  him  not  to  flaunt,  as  before, 
but  to  make  a  plain,  honest  sermon,  which  was  blessed  of 
God  to  famous  Dr.  Preston's  soul's  eternal  good." 

To  have  been  the  human  means  of  the  religious 
awakening  of  this  "  most  celebrated  of  the  Puritans," 
the  future  head  of  Emmanuel  itself,  was  in  itself  no 
small  contribution  to  the  Puritan  cause.  Cotton's  own 
spiritual  quickemng,  which  thus  found  public  expres- 
sion, is  said  to  have  been  due  to  a  similar  discourse 
by  the  eminent  Puritan  fellow  of  St.  John's  College, 
Richard  Sibbes.3  All  Cotton's  work  was  faithfully 


1  Voting^  Ghr-<w^.j)£  Ma  s  s.  ,  pp.  421,  422. 

2  Echard,  quoted  by~Ybung,  ibid.,  p.  506. 

3  Mather,   Magnalia,   i.,  p.  255.      Mather  rewrote  Whiting's  simple 
sketch  with  characteristic  verbosity  and  pedantry,  but  with  occasional 
additions  of  fact. 


JOHN  COTTON  59 

done.  At  Emmanuel  he  became,  during  the  six  years 
of  his  residence,  as  Whiting  records,  "  head-lecturer, 
and  dean,  and  catechist,"  and  "  a  diligent  tutor  to 
many  pupils."  ' 

Such  a  man  naturally  attracted  attention ;  and,  on 
June  24,  1612,  when  about  half-way  through  his 
twenty-seventh  year,  he  was  chosen  vicar  of  the  mag- 
nificent parish  church  of  St.  Botolphs,  in  the  busy 
Lincolnshire  seaport  of  Boston.2  Unlike  most  Eng- 
lish livings,  the  patronage  of  Boston  was  not  in  the 
hands  of  an  individual,  but  of  the  city  government. 
Cotton  Mather  states,  what  was  not  improbably  the 
fact,  though  it  is  otherwise  unattested,  that  the  City 
Council  was  a  tie  on  Cotton's  election,  and  that  the 
Mayor,  who  was  his  opponent,  twice  gave,  by  acci- 
dent, the  casting  vote  in  his  favor.3  The  young  vicar- 
elect  seems  to  have  been  acceptable  to  the  Puritanly 
inclined  people  of  Boston  in  general,  but  Whiting 
strongly  intimates  that  Bishop  Barlow  of  Lincoln  was 
only  brought  to  acquiesce  in  the  appointment  by  the 
employment  of  something  very  like  bribery  with  one 
of  his  chief  agents  by  some  of  Cotton's  Boston  sup- 
porters— a  transaction  in  which  there  is  no  evidence 
that  Cotton  himself  had  any  part.4 

Here,  at  Boston,  Cotton  settled  happily,  and  here, 
next  year,  he  brought  his  young  wife,  Elizabeth 

1  Whiting,  in  Young,  p.  421. 

2  Thompson,  History  and  Antiquities  of  Boston,  pp.  17,  412. 

3  Magnalia ,  i.,  p.  257.  4  Young,  pp.  422,  423. 


60  JOHN  COTTON 

Horrocks,  who  died  childless,  and  greatly  lamented  by 
the  parish  for  her  Christian  helpfulness,  after  eighteen 
years  of  wedded  life;1  and  here,  in  1632,  he  married 
his  parishioner,  Sarah  Hankridge,  the  widow  of  Wil- 
liam Story,  who  accompanied  him  to  America,  and, 
surviving  him  in  the  new  home  across  the  Atlantic, 
became,  in  1656,  the  wife  of  Rev.  Richard  Mather,  of 
the  New  England  Dorchester.*' 

There  can  be  no  question  that  Cotton's  ministry  of 
nearly  twenty-one  years  greatly  endeared  him  to  the 
people  of  the  English  Boston.  The  cold  pages  of  the 
records  of  the  Corporation  bear  repeated  testimony  to 
this  esteem.  Thus,  on  May  28,  1613,  that  body  paid 
him  £20,  as  a  gratuity,"  he  "  being  ...  a  man 
of  very  great  desertes."  In  1616  a  similar  gift  of  ;£io 
was  accompanied  by  an  expression  of  gratitude  for 
"  his  pains  in  preaching  very  great";  and  in  1619, 
£10  more  were  voted  him  "  in  consideration  of  his 
pains  in  preaching  and  catechising." 

Samuel  Whiting,  who  knew  him  well  at  this  period, 

L 

gives  an  extended  account  of  his  laborious  activities.4 

1  The  date  of  the  wedding  was  July  3,  1613,  and  the  place,  Balsham, 
county   of   Cambridge.     She   "was   living    as   late   as  Oct.   2,    1630." 
Cotton  Mather  says  the  marriage  was  at  the  advice  of  "  his  dear  friend, 
holy  Mr.  Bayns."     See  Magnalia,  i.,  pp.  258,  262  ;  Young,  Chron.  of 
Mass,,  p.  433  ;  Ellis,  Hist.  First  Church  in  Boston,  p.  29. 

2  Ellis,  ibid.     The  wedding  was  April  25,    1632.     She  survived  her 
third  husband,  dying  May  27,  1676. 

3  See  Thompson.  History  and  Antiquities  of  Boston,  passim. 

4  Many  of  the  details  of  this  paragraph  are  from  Whiting,  in  Young, 
pp.  424-426. 


JOHN  COTTON  6 1 

Sunday  mornings,  as  was  the  Puritan  custom,  his 
preaching  was  prevailingly  experiential  and  pastoral ; 
and  during  his  ministry  in  England  <4  he  preached 
over  the  first  six  chapters  of  the  Gospel  by  John,  the 
whole  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  the  Prophecy  of  Zepha- 
niah,  and  many  other  Scriptures";  Sunday  afternoons, 
during  those  twenty  years,  he  "  went  over  thrice  the 
whole  body  of  divinity  in  a  catechistical  way,"  and  at 
his  Thursday  lectures  "  he  preached  through  the  whole 
1st  and  2d  Epistles  of  John,  the  whole  book  of  Sol- 
omon's Song,  [and]  the  Parables  of  our  Saviour." 
Beside  these  more  formal  services,  he  preached  Wed- 
nesday and  Friday  mornings,  and  Saturday  afternoons; 
"  and  read  to  sundry  young  scholars  that  were  in  his 
house,  and  some  that  came  out  of  Germany,  and  had 
his  house  full  of  auditors."  Many  of  these  themes 
were  repeated  in  Cotton's  new  home  across  the  ocean, 
and  several  of  these  expositions,  notably  of  Canticles 
and  Ecclesiastes,  were  ultimately  printed  *  and  were 
greatly  valued  by  the  Puritans  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  In  this  manifold  effort,  Cotton  had  the 
assistance,  during  the  latter  part  of  his  Lincolnshire 
ministry,  of  Anthony  Tuckney,  who  was  to  be  his  suc- 
cessor at  the  English  Boston,  and  even  more  famous 
for  his  labors  on  the  two  catechisms  put  forth  by  the 
Westminster  Assembly.  Nor  was  this  all  of  Cotton's 
service  to  the  region.  As  Whiting  notes,  "  he  an- 

1  Canticles^  first  in  1642  ;  Ecclesiastes,  1654. 


62  JOHN  COTTON 

swered  many  letters  that  were  sent  far  and  near; 
wherein  were  handled  many  difficult  cases  of  con- 
science, and  many  doubts  by  him  cleared  to  the  great- 
est satisfaction." 

One  monument  of  this  form  of  conscientious,  time- 
consuming  effort  remains,  and  may  be  cited  as  an 
illustration,  doubtless,  of  many  others.  The  most  con- 
siderable controversy  of  Cotton's  opening  ministry  was 
a  defense  of  the  characteristic  doctrines  of  Calvinism 
against  the  then  novel  Arminian  speculations  intro- 
duced into  his  parish  by  a  prominent  physician  of  his 
congregation,  Dr.  Peter  Baron.  Victor  in  this  discus- 
sion, and  deemed  especially  successful  in  clearing  "  the 
Doctrine  of  Reprobation  against  .  .  .  exceptions," 
he  was  appealed  to,  about  1618,  by  a  neighboring  min- 
ister to  settle  some  doubts  in  regard  to  this  much  de- 
bated point  of  divinity.  Cotton  replied  at  once,  and 
his  answer  was  still  in  circulation  in  manuscript  thirty 
years  later,  and  so  influential  that  Dr.  William  Twisse, 
the  famous  supralapsarian  moderator  of  the  Westmin- 
ster Assembly,  felt  constrained,  as  late  as  1646,  to 
print  a  criticism  of  its,  to  his  thinking,  deficient 
Calvinism.2 

1  The  story  is  told  at  length  by  Cotton,    Way  of  the  Cong.  Churches 
Cleared,  pp.  32-35,  London,  1648  ;  and  by  Twisse  in  the  Preface  to  his 
Treatise  of  Mr.  Cottoris  clearing  certaine  Doubts  concerning  Predesti- 
nation.    London,  1646. 

2  Twisse's  argument,  not  his  Preface,  was  apparently  written  as  early 
as  1630. 


JOHN  COTTON  63 

Such  a  life  of  activity  as  this  shows  what  a  gulf  there 
was  between  the  Puritan  thought  of  the  ministry,  and 
that  easy-going,  spiritually  unstrenuous  conception, 
satisfied  with  a  perfunctory  repetition  of  the  service, 
and  fulfilling  at  most  the  minimum  requisition  of  the 
law  as  to  preaching,  which  prevailed  very  largely  out- 
side of  Puritan  ranks.  It  shows,  also,  why  it  was  that 
those  who  had  once  felt  the  power  of  such  a  ministry 
often  preferred  exile  to  its  discontinuance.  One  read- 
ily credits  the  statement  of  his  friend  Samuel  Whiting, 
that  "  he  was  exceedingly  beloved  of  the  best,  and 
admired  and  reverenced  of  the  worst  of  his  hearers." 
Not  the  least  evidence  of  this  affection  is  the  desire  of 
the  people  of  this  parish,  repeatedly  expressed  to  the 
then  long-absent  former  pastor  in  New  England,  that 
he  should  return  and  take  up  again  the  work  which 
the  tyranny  of  Laud  compelled  him  to  lay  down  ;  but 
for  which  the  downfall  of  episcopacy,  in  1642,  seemed 
again  to  open  the  door.  Absent,  he  was  never  forgot- 
ten, and  some  remembrance  of  his  past  services,  prob- 
ably of  a  pecuniary  character,  was  sent  to  him  by  his 
former  congregation  annually  as  long  as  he  lived.8 

In  glancing  at  Cotton's  English  ministry,  we  notice 
as  its  most  dramatic  feature  his  rejection  of  conformity 
to  those  usages  of  English  ceremonial  which  the  Puri- 


1  Young, 

*  See  Cotton's  grateful  Preface  to  his  Holinesse  of  Church-Members. 
London,  1650. 


64  JOHN  COTTON 

tans  opposed.  He  was  always  a  Puritan  in  inclination  ; 
but  at  his  settlement  he  followed  the  rubrics  of  the 
Prayer  Book  without  serious  scruple.  A  change  came 
in  his  feeling  about  1615  ;'  brought  about,  as  he 
records,  through  two  considerations:  a 

"  i.  The  significancy  and  efficacy  put  upon  them  [the 
ceremonies]  in  the  Preface  to  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer, 
[and]  the  second  was  the  limitation  of  Church-power  .  .  . 
to  the  observation  of  the  Commandements  of  Christ,  which 
made  it  appear  to  me  utterly  unlawful!,  for  any  Church- 
power  to  enjoyn  the  observation  of  indifferent  Ceremonies 
which  Christ  had  not  commanded." 

Under  the  stress  of  this  conviction,  that  forms  of 
worship  must  have  express  warrant  from  the  Word  of 
God,  he  modified  the  services  of  the  church  of  his 
charge  from  the  ritual  prescribed  by  law.  Just  how 
far  this  modification  went  it  is  difficult  to  say.  Cot- 
ton, writing  thirty-two  years  later,  in  1647,  declared 
that  he  "  forbore  all  the  Ceremonies  alike  at  once  "  ; 3 
but  a  letter  to  his  bishop  in  January,  1624,  shows  that 
though  he  had  abandoned  the  surplice,  the  sign  of  the 
cross  in  baptism,  and  kneeling  at  communion,  he  still 
retained  the  ring  in  marriage  and  the  usage  of  stand- 
ing during  the  repetition  of  the  Creed.4  The  liturgy  of 

1  Whiting,  in  Young,  p.  423. 

2  Way  of  the  Cong.  Churches  Cleared,  pp.  18,  19. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  1 8. 

4  See  the  letter  of  January  31,  1624,  to  Bishop  Williams  in  JV.  E. 
Historical  and  Genealogical  Register,  xxviii.,  pp.  137—139. 


JOHN  COTTON  65 

the  Prayer  Book  was  still  employed  in  public  worship 
as  late  as  1624,  and  possibly  was  not  abandoned  by 
Cotton  so  long  as  he  remained  in  England.1  The  dis- 
crepancy in  these  two  statements  is  not  great, — in  any 
case  the  abandonment  involved  the  principal  cere- 
monies attacked  by  the  Puritans ; — and  from  this  posi- 
tion of  rejection  Cotton  was  to  be  moved  neither  by 
threats  nor  by  offers  of  preferment.2  His  congregation 
loyally  supported  him,  and,  thus  encouraged,  he  went 
further,  after  a  time,  in  the  direction  of  Congregation- 
alism. As  he  himself  records : 3 

'  There  were  some  scores  of  godly  persons  in  Boston  in 
Lincoln-shire  .  .  .  who  can  witnesse,  that  we  entered 
into  a  Covenant  with  the  Lord,  and  one  with  another  to 
follow  after  the  Lord  in  the  purity  of  his  Worship." 

That  is  to  say,  that  within  the  general  congregation 
a  special  circle  of  seekers  for  a  truer  spiritual  life  was 
formed  which,  had  it  further  developed,  might  have 
become  a  church  on  the  New  England  plan.  Indeed, 
Cotton  states  that  he  and  his  associates  had  so  far  ad- 
vanced toward  the  doctrine  of  the  independence  of  the 
local  congregation  that  they  very  largely  disregarded 
the  episcopal  courts.4 

1  N.  E.  Historical  and  Genealogical  Register,  xxviii.,  pp.   137-139. 
Cotton  Mather  (Magnalia,  i.,  p.  261)  asserts  that  it  was  set  aside.    Cot- 
ton, in  his  letter  to  the  bishop,  does  not  say  that  he  used  it,  yet  the  im- 
plication would  seem  to  be  that  he  did.    At  all  events,  it  was  in  regular 
use  in  his  church  either  by  himself  or  by  his  assistant. 

2  Way  of  the  Cong.  Churches  Cleared, 
'/&V.,  p.  20. 

5 


66  JOHN  COTTON 

Naturally,  these  things  from  time  to  time  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  ecclesiastical  authorities;  but, 
thanks  to  the  hearty  support  of  his  congregation,  the 
friendship  of  the  earls  of  Lincoln  and  Dorset,  and  the 
good-will  of  John  Williams,  later  Archbishop  of  York, 
who,  from  1621  onward  as  long  as  Cotton  remained  at 
old  Boston,  was  Bishop  of  the  Lincoln  diocese  to 
which  Boston  ecclesiastically  belonged,  Cotton  was 
for  many  years  unhindered  to  a  degree  very  unusual 
among  the  Puritan  ministry. 

But,  though  more  secure  of  his  own  position  for  a 
time  than  most  of  his  party,  by  reason  of  the  degree 
of  influence  that  he  could  command,  Cotton  seems  to 
have  sympathized  with  the  Puritan  movement  for  the 
colonization  of  New  England  from  its  beginning,  and 
to  have  looked  upon  it  as  one  in  which  he  might  have 
a  personal  share.  It  must  have  been  through  his  in- 
fluence that  the  English  Boston  was  conspicuously 
represented  in  the  negotiations  of  1629,  which  resulted 
in  the  great  emigration  of  that  year  and  of  1630.'  Nor 
can  it  have  been  without  his  countenance  that  his 
Lincolnshire  friends  and  sympathizers,  Thomas  Dud- 
ley, and  William  Coddington,  came  to  the  new  land 
with  Winthrop  and  his  company  in  the  year  last 
named.  Cotton  himself  preached  a  sermon  to  the 
departing  emigrants  at  Southampton,  whither  he  had 
accompanied  them  to  show  his  good-will  toward  their 

1  Records  of    .     .     .     Massachusetts,  i.,  p.  28. 


JOHN  COTTON  67 

undertaking.1     This  discourse  was  the  first  of  his  writ- 
ings to  appear  in  print. 

But  Cotton's  own  security  could  not  much  longer 
continue  unassailed  now  that  Laud  was  daily  increas- 
ing in  power.  In  1632  process  was  begun  against  him 
in  the  High  Commission  Court  —  to  appear  before 
which  tribunal  meant  for  him,  as  his  earliest  biographer 
expressed  it,  "scorns  and  prison."2  Like  Thomas 
Hooker  under  similar  circumstances,  and  with  the  ap- 
proval of  the  chief  members  of  his  congregation,3  he 
sought  safety  and  concealment  in  flight.  In  disguise 
he  reached  London  and  was  there  concealed  by  John 
Davenport,  whose  growing  non-conformity  was  greatly 
strengthened  by  Cotton's  arguments.  Thence,  on 
October  3,  1632,  he  wrote4  to  his  "  dear  wife,  and 
comfortable  yoke-fellow  "  : 

"  If  our  heavenly  Father  be  pleased  to  make  our  yoke 
more  heavy  than  we  did  so  soon  expect,  remember  (I  pray 
thee)  what  we  have  heard,  that  our  heavenly  husband,  the 
Lord  Jesus,  when  he  first  called  us  to  fellowship  with  him- 
self, called  us  unto  this  condition,  to  deny  ourselves  and 
take  up  our  cross  daily  to  follow  him.  .  .  .  Where  I 
am  for  the  present,  I  am  fitly  and  welcomely  accommo- 
dated, I  thank  God;  so,  as  I  see,  here  I  might  rest,  (desired 
enough,)  till  my  friends  at  home  shall  direct  further." 

1  Young,    Chron.   of  Mass.,   p.    126.     The   sermon  was   printed   as 
God's  Promise  to  His  Plantation.     London,  1630. 

2  Young,  p.  428. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  440;  Cotton,  Holinesse  of  Church-Members,  Preface. 

4  Letter  in  Young,  p.  432. 


68  JOHN  COTTON 

Such  a  life  of  concealment  could  not  long  be  main- 
tained; and  consequently,  moved  partly  by  the  en- 
treaties of  his  friends  who  had  gone  to  the  New  World, 
Cotton  resigned  his  vicarate,  on  May  7,  1633,  in  a 
noble  letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,1  and  prepared  to 
go  to  New  England.  The  watch  set  upon  the  ports 
to  catch  him  made  his  escape  difficult,2  but  he  and  his 
wife  slipped  secretly  onto  the  Griffin  as  she  lay  an- 
chored at  the  Downs  early  in  the  following  July,  and 
got  safely  away.  In  the  same  ship,  beside  Thomas 
Hooker,  Samuel  Stone,  and  John  Haynes,  all  des- 
tined to  be  instrumental  in  founding  Connecticut, 
were  Thomas  and  John  Leverett,  Atherton  Hough, 
Edmund  Quincy,  William  Pierce,  and  probably  oth- 
ers of  his  English  parishioners;  and  the  vessel  thus 
freighted  with  three  prominent  Puritan  ministers, 
and  their  faithful  adherents,  had  a  Puritan  feast  of 
preaching  all  the  voyage  through,  each  minister  ordi- 
narily discoursing  daily  to  the  ship's  company—  '  Mr. 
Cotton  in  the  morning,  Mr.  Hooker  in  the  afternoon, 
Mr.  Stone  after  supper."  Yet  perhaps  the  most  sig- 
nificant incident  of  the  voyage  was  one  which  showed 
Cotton's  own  advance  toward  the  full  theory  of  early 
Congregationalism.  His  first  child,  a  son  named  Sea- 
born, in  remembrance  of  the  momentous  voyage,  was 

1  In  Young,  pp.  434-437. 

2  Winthrop,  Journal,  i.,  p.  130,  1853. 

3  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  265. 


JOHN  COTTON  69 

born  on  shipboard,  but  Cotton  refused  to  baptize  him 
then,  as  he  afterwards  explained  to  the  church  in  the 
New  England  Boston,  "  not  for  want  of  fresh  water, 
for  he  held,  sea  water  would  have  served;  [but]  I,  be- 
cause they  had  no  settled  congregation  there ;  [and] 
2,  because  a  minister  hath  no  power  to  give  the  seals 
but  in  his  own  congregation."  Viewed  as  a  depar- 
ture from  current  English  practices  this  was  radical 
enough. 

They  landed  at  Boston  on  September  4th,  and,  four 
days  later,  Cotton  and  his  wife  were  admitted  on  con- 
fession of  faith  to  the  Boston  church.2  But  the  new 
arrival  was  a  man  of  such  fame  and  abilities  that,  as 
Winthrop  records:  "  he  was  desired  to  divers  places," 
and  to  determine  where  his  lot  should  be  cast  "  the 
governor  and  council  met  at  Boston,  and  called  the 
ministers  and  elders  of  all  the  churches,"  less  than  two 
weeks  after  his  landing.  The  decision  was  for  Boston, 
already  provided  with  one  minister  in  the  person  of 
John  Wilson,  and,  accordingly,  on  October  loth,  after 
his  parishioner  in  old  England,  Thomas  Leverett,  had 
been  ordained  a  ruling  elder  of  the  American  Boston 
church,  Cotton  himself  was  elected  teacher  of  that 
congregation ;  and,  to  quote  from  Winthrop,  who  was 
an  eye-witness,3 

"  Then  the  pastor  [Wilson]  and  the  two  elders  laid  their 

1  Winthrop,  Journal,  i.,  p.  131. 

*  Ibid.,  i.,  pp.  128,  131,  132.  3  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  136. 


;0  JOHN  COTTON 

hands  upon  his  head,  and  the  pastor  prayed,  and  then, 
taking  off  their  hands,  laid  them  on  again,  and,  speaking  to 
him  by  his  name,  they  did  thereby  design  him  to  the  said 
office,  in  the  name  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  did  give  him  the 
charge  of  the  congregation,  and  did  thereby  (as  by  a  sign 
from  God)  indue  him  with  the  gifts  fit  for  his  office,  and 
lastly  did  bless  him." 

He  had  not  renounced  the  separate  congregations 
that  made  up  the  Church  of  England  as  false  churches, 
—  that  he  never  did, —  but  he  had  renounced  the  gov- 
ernment and  ceremonies  of  that  Church ;  and  in  ac- 
cepting office  in  his  new  congregation  was  ordained  to 
its  particular  charge  as,  in  his  judgment,  the  only 
rightful  ordination  that  a  minister  could  have.  And 
so  he  entered  on  his  New  England  ministry. 

Here  his  ministry  had  much  the  same  quality  as  in 
the  home  land.  The  same  indefatigable  labor  in 
preaching  and  in  the  exposition  of  Scripture,  the  same 
affectionate  reverence  from  his  congregation,  the  same 
capacity  to  mold  strong  men  to  his  way  of  thinking, 
that  had  marked  his  career  in  old  Boston,  were  his  in 
added  degree.  We  can  almost  picture  him  to  our 
imagination  as  he  stood  on  Sundays  and  Thursdays  in 
the  pulpit  of  the  rude  New  England  meeting-house, 
soon  after  his  arrival,  short  of  stature '  and  rather  in- 
clined to  stoutness,  ruddy  faced,  his  long  hair  already 
showing  traces  of  that  snowy  whiteness  that  it  ulti- 
mately attained;  his  sermon  simple,  plain,  direct, 

1  These  details  are  from  the  Magnalia,  i.,  pp.  275,  280. 


JOHN  COTTON  Jl 

levelled  in  language  to  the  capacities  of  the  humblest 
of  his  hearers;  his  delivery  dignified,  never  florid,  or 
oratorical,  always  forceful,  and  emphasized  by  occa- 
sional gestures  of  his  right  hand.  Not  so  remarkable 
in  the  pulpit,  perhaps,  as  Thomas  Hooker  or  Thomas 
Shepard,  men  always  heard  him  gladly.  It  is  difficult  to 
give  an  illustration  of  his  pulpit  style  within  our  scanty 
limits;  but  at  the  risk  of  injustice,  which  the  presenta- 
tion of  a  fragment  always  involves,  I  select  the  follow- 
ing brief  passage  from  his  volume  of  sermons  entitled 
God's  Way,  not  as  peculiar  but  as  typical  of  his  style. 
He  is  speaking  of  the  spirit  of  prayer: l 

"  These  ever  go  together,  where  there  is  a  spirit  of  Grace, 
there  is  a  spirit  of  Prayer.  On  the  contrary,  if  you  cannot 
pray,  if  you  neither  know  what  to  pray,  nor  how  to  pray,  if 
you  goe  to  Prayer  unwillingly,  not  any  work  so  wearisome, 
or  straining  to  you  as  Prayer  is;  if  for  any  businesse  that 
comes  to  you,  you  can  be  content  to  avoid  Prayer;  if  any 
idle  company  come  to  your  house,  all  must  be  set  aside  to 
mind  them;  not  but  that  a  man's  businesse  may  some- 
times be  such  as  may  hinder  him  for  a  time:  but  if  a  man 
be  glad  of  any  such  occasion,  and  he  comes  to  Prayer  as  a 
Beare  to  a  stake,  then  be  not  deceived,  you  may  think  you 
are  gracious,  but  the  truth  is,  unlesse  you  find  some  measure 
of  ability,  and  liberty,  and  necessity  to  pray,  you  yet  want 
a  spirit  of  Grace.  You  would  scarce  think  a  child  were 
living,  if  it  did  not  cry  as  soone  as  it  is  borne;  if  still-borne, 
you  take  it  for  dead-borne.  If  thou  beest  a  still-borne 
Christian,  thou  art  dead-borne;  if  thou  hast  no  wants  to 

1  London,  1641.     pp.  9,  10, 


72  JOHN   COTTON 

tell  God  of,  if  yet  unlisty  to  pray,  and  would  be  glad  of 
any  occasion  to  shut  out  Prayer,  be  not  deceived,  where 
there  wants  Prayer  there  wants  Grace;  no  Prayer,  no 
Grace;  little  Prayer,  little  Grace;  frequencie  of  Prayer, 
argues  power  of  Grace." 

It  was  this  power  to  make  great  themes  readily  com- 
prehensible with  familiar  illustration  in  simple  lan- 
guage, that  made  his  effectiveness  as  a  preacher; — and 
it  is  a  power  as  demonstrative  of  his  learning  and  tal- 
ents as  is  his  knowledge  of  Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Latin 
in  which  he  had  probably  no  contemporary  equal  in 
the  New  World.1 

At  home  Cotton's  habits  were  severely  studious. 
His  grandson,  Cotton  Mather,  says  that  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  call  twelve  hours  "  a  scholar's  day."  His 
reading  in  the  fathers  and  the  schoolmen  was  wide, 
but  Calvin  was  his  delight,  and,  as  he  said  in  old  age, 
he  loved  "  to  sweeten  [his]  mouth  with  a  piece  of  Cal- 
vin before  [he  went]  to  sleep."  With  his^  household 
he  worshipped  morning  and  evening,  but  "  was  very 
short  in  all,  accounting  .  .  .  that  it  was  a  thing 
inconvenient  many  ways  to  be  tedious  in  family 
duties."  Yet  he  found  time  for  an  abundant,  though 
simple  hospitality;  and  there  must  have  been  a  kind 
of  grim  humor  in  his  make-up,  of  which  the  anecdote 
recorded  by  Flavel  and  by  Mather  is  an  illustration. 

I1  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  273. 
2  For  the  facts  in  this  paragraph,  see  ibid.,  i.,  pp    274-277. 


JOHN  COTTON  73 

One  of  a  party  of  half-drunken  roisterers,  so  the  story 
goes,  declared  to  his  companions,  as  he  saw  the  aged 
Boston  minister  coming,  "  '  I  '11  go  and  put  a  trick  on 
old  Cotton.'  Down  he  goes,  and  .  .  .  whispers 
these  words  into  his  ear:  '  Cotton,'  said  he,  '  thou  art 
an  old  fool/  Mr.  Cotton  replied,  '  I  confess  I  am  so: 
the  Lord  make  both  me  and  thee  wiser  than  we  are.'  '!- 
'Cotton  Mather  affirms  of  his  grandfather  that  he 
"  had  a  great  aversion  from  engaging  in  any  civil  " 
affairs.1  The  statement  is  true  only  in  the  narrowest 
sense  of  unwillingness  to  hold  office  or  undertake 
quasi-judicial  duties.  No  minister  in  New  England 
history  was  ever  more  broadly  influential  or  more  con- 
sulted in  political  or  legislative  concerns.  His  pulpit, 
especially  at  the  Thursday  lecture,  was  the  place  of 
frequent  declaration  of  his  opinion  on  current  discus- 
sion, as,  for  example,  in  1639,  when  he  made  a  legal 
process  against  a  Boston  merchant  who  had  been  ac- 
cused of  charging  unduly  high  prices  the  occasion  for 
a  discussion  of  the  principles  of  trade; 2  or,  in  1641,  re- 
proved those  members  of  the  legislature  who  proposed 
to  drop  from  office  "two  of  their  ancientest  magistrates 
because  they  were  grown  poor  "  ; 3  or  when,  even  more 
conspicuously,  in  1634,  preaching  at  the  request  of  the 
General  Court,  he  successfully  defended  the  veto  power 
of  the  magistrates — the  later  upper  house  of  the  legisla- 
ture— against  the  opposition  of  the  representatives  of 

1  Magnalia,  p.  277.         2  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  381.         3/foV,  ii.,p.  67. 


74  JOHN  COTTON 

I 

the  Massachusetts  towns.1  In  these  matters  Cotton  was 
not  in  advance  of  his  age.  As  there  will  be  later  oc- 
casion to  notice,  he  held  it  to  be  the  duty  of  a  ruler  to 
suppress  error  in  matters  of  belief.  He  heartily  ap- 
proved the  limitation  of  the  suffrage  to  church-mem- 
Jbers^introduced,  indeed,  in  1631,  two  years  before  his 
coming,  and  to  escape  from  which  was  probably  a 
strong  inducing  cause  of  the  settlement  of  Connecticut 
by  Cotton's  fellow  voyagers  in  the  Griffin,  and  his 
early  associates  in  Massachusetts,  Hooker,  Stone,  and 
Haynes.  He  entertained  much  higher  views  than 
Hooker,  for  instance,  as  to  the  authority  of  rulers. 
Though  he  asserted  it  to  be  "  the  people's  duty  and 
right  to  maintain  their  true  liberties,"  3  he  affirmed  in  a 
famous  phrase: 4 

"  Democracy,  I  do  not  conceyve  that  ever  God  did 
ordeyne  as  a  fitt  government  eyther  for  church  or  common- 
wealth. ...  As  for  monarchy  and  aristocracy,  they 
are  both  of  them  clearely  approoved,  and  directed  in  Scrip- 
ture yet  so  as  [God]  referreth  the  soveraigntie  to  himselfe, 
and  setteth  up  Theocracy  in  both,  as  the  best  form  of  gov- 
ernment." 

• 

/Occasionally,  indeed,  his  recommendations  were  not 
approved.  The  Massachusetts  legislature,  in  1641, 
adopted  the  code  of  laws  which  Rev.  Nathaniel  Ward  of 

1  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  168. 

2  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  266. 

3  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  169. 

4  Letter,  of  1636,  to  Lord  Saye  and  Sele,  quoted  in  N.  E.  Hist,  and 
Gen.  Register,  x.,  p.  12. 


JOHN  COTTON  75 

Ipswich  had  drawn  up,  aided  in  his  task  by  his  early 
training  as  a  lawyer,  rather  than  the  strongly  Mosaic 
outline  of  suggested  judicial  enactment  prepared  by 
Cotton  in  1639,  and  printed  in  1641.*  But,  on  the 
whole,  there  is  as  much  truth  as  exaggeration  in  the 
affirmation  of  the  historian  Hubbard  regarding  Cot- 
ton, that  "  whatever  he  delivered  in  the  pulpit  was 
soon  put  into  an  Order  of  Court,  if  of  a  civil,  or  set 
up  as  a  practice  in  the  church,  if  of  an  ecclesiastical 
concernment." 

There  are,  however,  three  special  features  of  Cotton's 
American  life  that  cannot  be  neglected  in  any  treat- 
ment of  him,  though  the  hour  at  our  disposal  gives 
scanty  opportunity  for  more  than  a  mention  of  them. 
First,  in  the  commotion  which  it  excited  in  its  own 
day,  and  in  the  difficulty  of  defining  Cotton's  relation 
to  it,  is  the  so-called  Antinomian  controversy.  That 
most  turmoiling  of  early  New  England  religious  dis- 
turbances began  in  the  criticisms  passed  on  the  preach- 
ing of  most  of  the  ministers  in  the  vicinity  of  Boston 
by  a  warm  admirer  of  Cotton,  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson,3 
who,  with  her  husband,  had  followed  him  from  Lin- 
colnshire in  1634  to  enjoy  his  ministry  in  the  New 

1  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  388  ;  ii.,  p.  66  ;  Palfrey,  Hist,  of  N.  E.,  ii.,  pp. 
22-30.  For  the  rare  work,  An  Abstract  or  the  Lawes  of  New  Eng- 
land, see  Hutchinson's  Collection  of  Papers,  or  I  Coll.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc., 
v.,  pp.  173-187.  2  General  Hist,  of  N.  E.,  p.  182. 

3  The  best  modern  treatment  of  this  controversy  is  that  by  Charles 
Francis  Adams  in  his  Three  Episodes  of  Massachusetts  History,  and 
Antinomianism  in  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay. 


76  JOHN-  COTTON 

World.  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  views  were  essentially 
those  now  known  as  of  the  "higher  life  ";  but  they 
were  presented  in  the  form  of  an  extreme  assertion  of 
the  personal  indwelling  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  be- 
liever, that  divine  Person  becoming  so  one  with  him 
as  to  render  all  other  proof  of  sanctification  than  a 
consciousness  of  this  indwelling  not  merely  unneces- 
sary but  vain.  He  who  sought  evidence  of  Christian 
character  in  growing  enjoyment  of  the  worship  of 
God,  or  improvement  of  conduct,  was  still  under  a 
"  covenant  of  works  ";  while  only  he  who  based  the 
proof  of  his  acceptance  with  God  on  a  sense  of  per- 
sonal union  with  the  divine  Spirit  was  under  the 
•— *'  covenant  of  grace." 

These  views  Mrs.  Hutchinson  taught  to  many  in 
the  Boston  church,  who  were  drawn  to  her  by  her  skill 
and  self-sacrifice  in  nursing;  and  being  a  woman  of 
keen  mind,  warm  heart,  and  a  ready  tongue,  she  soon 
became  the  leader  of  well-attended  meetings  in  Boston, 
at  which  her  peculiar  views  were  set  forth,  and  criti- 
cisms freely  passed  upon  the  Sunday  sermons.  At 
these  meetings  Mrs.  Hutchinson  declared  that  Cotton 
and  her  husband's  brother-in-law,  John  Wheelwright, 
were  preachers  of  the  "  covenant  of  grace,"  while  all 
the  rest  of  the  ministers,  Thomas  Shepard  possibly 
excepted,  were  under  the  "  covenant  of  works,"  and 
their  labors  therefore  of  very  dubious  spiritual  value. 
To  these  opinions  she  drew  a  majority  of  the  people  of 


JOHN  COTTON  77 

Boston,  and  among  them,  Henry  Vane,  who  became 
Governor  of  Massachusetts  in  1636 ;  while  a  minority  of 
the  Boston  church,  led  by  its  pastor,  John  Wilson,  and 
John  Winthrop,  opposed  her,  and  had  the  sympathy 
in  this  opposition  of  most  of  the  inhabitants  of  other 
towns  of  the  colony.  The  Boston  church  was  tur- 
moiled  ;  a  ministerial  meeting  tried  in  vain,  in  October, 

1636,  to  heal  the  breach.     In  December,  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson  and  the  colonial  ministers  generally  discussed 
the  case  in  the  presence  of  the  magistrates.     The  samef 
month  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  supporters  tried  to  discipline/ 
Pastor  Wilson.      The  gubernatorial  election  of   1637* 
turned  on  the  issue,  the  choice  of  Winthrop  being  dis- 
tinctly an  anti-Hutchinsonian  victory;  but  at  Boston 
the  halberd-bearers  refused  to  do  honor  to  the  Gov- 
ernor, and  most  of  the  Boston  quota  for  the  Pequot 
campaign   of  that  summer  refused  to  serve  because 
Wilson  was  chaplain  and  was  under  the  "  covenant  of 
works."     Then  followed  the  opening,  on  August  30, 

1637,  of  the  first  synod  or  General  Council  of  Congre- 
gational  history,  —  ministers   and    delegates    of    the 
churches  meeting  and   condemning  some  eighty-two 
erroneous  opinions  alleged  to  be  held  in  New  England, 
to  be  followed  in  turn  in  November  by  the  banishment 
by  the  General  Court  of  Wheelwright  and  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson  and  the  disarming  of  their  followers ;  the  painful 
story  of  fanaticism  and  persecution  closing  with  the 
excommunication  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson  in  March,  1638. 


5-  LIB1^^. 
OF  THE 


78  JOHN  COTTON 

Now,  what  was  the  relation  of  Cotton  to  this  melan- 
choly controversy  ?  As  has  already  been  pointed  out, 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  had  come  to  New  England  as  his 
admirer,  and  had  held  him  up  to  praise  as  one  of  the 
two  New  England  ministers  who  taught  a  "  covenant 
of  grace."  Cotton  did,  indeed,  at  first  give  large  sup- 
port to  her  and  her  followers.  As  Cotton  himself 
later  explained : l 

"  being  naturally  (I  thank  God)  not  suspicious,  hearing  no 
more  of  their  Tenents  from  them,  then  what  seemed  to  mee 
Orthodoxall,  I  beleeved,  they  had  been  far  off  from  such 
grosse  errors,  as  were  bruited  of  them." 

More  than  this,  he  regarded  her  religious  labors  as 
valuable  means  by  which  2 

"  many  of  the  women  (and  by  them  their  husbands)  were 
convinced,  that  they  had  gone  on  in  a  Covenant  of  Works, 
and  were  much  shaken  and  humbled  thereby,  and  brought 
to  enquire  more  seriously  after  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

Cotton,  who  was  something  of  a  mystic,  held  to 
"  the  indwelling  not  onely  of  the  Gifts  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  but  of  his  Person  also  in  the  Regenerate/'  as 
"an  holy  Truth  of  God;"8  a  view  which  a  much 
more  subtle  theologian  than  Mrs.  Hutchinson  might 
have  found  difficulty  in  discriminating  from  the  theory 
to  which  she  converted  Vane,  that  the  believer  is  in 
"  personal  union  with  the  Holy  Ghost."  Acting  in 

1  Way  of  the  Cong.  Churches  Cleared,  p.  39. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  51.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  36,  37.  4  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  246. 


JOHN  COTTON  79 

sympathy  with  the  Hutchinsonian  party,  at  first, 
Cotton  was  asked  by  his  fellow  ministers  twice  during 
the  autumn  and  winter  of  1636-7  to  answer  in  writing 
their  questions  on  the  disputed  points;  and  did  so,  not 
wholly  to  their  satisfaction.1  On  the  last  day  of  1636, 
he  publicly  rebuked  his  colleague,  John  Wilson,  the 
pastor  of  the  Boston  church  of  which  he  was  teacher, 
for  his  attitude  of  opposition  to  the  Hutchinsonian 
movement.  When  the  anti-Hutchinsonian  party,  re- 
stored to  power  by  the  political  overturn  which  placed 
Winthrop  in  the  governor's  chair  in  May,  1637,  made 
an  ungracious  use  of  its  victory  by  enacting  a  law 
which  rendered  further  immigration  of  sympathizers 
with  Mrs.  Hutchinson  wellnigh  impossible,2  Cotton, 
supported  by  some  sixty  of  his  congregation,  planned 
to  transfer  themselves  to  the  place  then  known  as 
"  Quinipyatk,"  but  destined  to  be  settled  by  John 
Davenport  and  his  associates  a  year  later  and  to  bear 
the  name  that  they  gave  it,  New  Haven.3 

Yet,  as  the  controversy  went  on,  the  views  advanced 
by  the  Hutchinsonian  party  were  les^  and  lesg  pleasing- 
to  Cotton.  Many  in  his  own  church  had  come,  by 
January, ^1637,  to  believe  "  that  the  letter  of  the 
Scripture  holds  forth  nothing  but  a  covenant  of  works, 

1  Winthrop,  pp.  249-253.     The  second  of  these  series  of  questions  and 
Cotton's  answers  thereto  were  published  as  Sixteene  Questions  of  Seriovs 
and  Necessary  Consequence.     London,  1644. 

2  Records  of    .     .     .     Massachusetts,  i.,  p.  196. 
'Cotton,   Way  of  the  Cong.  Churches  Cleared,  pp.  52-54. 


80  JOHN  COTTON 

and  to  entertain  an  almost  Quaker  confidence  in  "  as- 
surance by  immediate  revelation."  *  To  Cotton,  as  to 
the  New  England  ministry  generally,  the  doctrine  of 
"  immediate  Revelations  without  the  Word,  and  these 
as  infallible  as  the  Scripture  itself"  was  "  vile  Mon- 
tanism."  2  To  attack  the  plainness,  authority,  or  abso- 
lute finality  and  completeness  of  the  Divine  Word, was 
to  undermine  the  very  citadel  of  Christianity.  So  it 
may  well  have  been  that  Cotton  came  seriously  to 
doubt  the  character  of  the  Hutchinsonian  movement 
as  he  came  to  know  it  better.  The  defeat  of  the 
Hutchinsonian  party  politically,  and  the  entreaties  and 
arguments  of  his  ministerial  brethren  in  the  synod  of 
August  and  September,  1637,  undoubtedly  also  had 
weight  with  him  ;  and,  by  the  conclusion  of  the  synod, 
he  had  completely  gone  over  to  the  opponents  of  the 
Hutchinsonian  movement.  Yet  he  retained  sufficient 
regard  for  Mrs.  Hutchinson  herself  to  do  what  he  could 
for  her  at  the  trial  before  the  General  Court  which  led 
to  her  banishment  in  November,  1637. 3  But  the  tide 
ran  strong;  and  Cotton  was  soon  declaring  that  "  he 
had  been  abused  and  made  their  stalking-horse  "  4  by 
the  Hutchinsonian  party  and  turned  almost  savagely 
upon  it.  In  the  merciless  church  trial  of  the  unfortu- 
nate woman  he  admonished  her  two  sons  because  they 

1  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  252. 

2  Cotton,  Way  of  Cong.  Churches  Cleared,  p.  36. 

3  Compare  Adams,   Three  Episodes,  pp.  492-508. 

4  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  304. 


JOHN  COTTON  8 1 

stood  by  their  mother,  and  he  now  attacked  Mrs. 
Hutchinson  with  a  vehemence  almost  equal  to  that  of 
Wilson  himself.1  Though  much  may  be  said  in  excuse 
of  Cotton's  conduct,  it  is  not  a  page  that  is  pleasant 
to  look  upon.  A  few  years  later,  when  Cotton  had 
come  to  be  regarded  as  the  great  expounder  of  Con- 
gregationalism by  the  supporters  of  that  polity  in  the 
Westminster  Assembly,  this  episode  was  turned  against 
him  by  Presbyterian  champions  like  Robert  Baillie,8 
the  Scotch  commissioner  to  that  famous  body,  and  he 
was  charged  with  "  Montanism,"  "  Antinomianisme 
and  Familism,"  and  various  other  ill-titled  heresies  on 
its  account;  but  it  never  diminished  his  commanding 
influence  in  New  England,  or  seriously  affected  the 

V  regard  in  which  he  was  held  in  the  land  of  his  birth. 
A  second  controversy  in  which  Cotton  was  involved, 
less  important  indeed  than  that  which  has  just  been 
outlined,  was  a  two-fold  debate  with  Roger  Williams, 
that  much  employed  his  pen  in  the  decade  following 
the  Antinomian  struggle.  As  we  all  doubtless  remem- 
ber, Roger  Williams  was  banished  from  Massachusetts 
by  its  legislature — an  event  which  occurred  on  Octo- 
ber 9,  1635.  It  would  be  an  aid  to  historic  accuracy 
were  it  as  generally  remembered  that  Williams  was 
not  at  this  time  a  Baptist,  and  that  views  of  baptism 

1  Winthrop,  i.,  pp.  306,  307;  Adams,  Antinomianism,  pp.  332,  333. 

2  See  Baillie,  Dissuasive  from  the  Err  ours  of  the   Time.     London, 
1645. 


82  JOHN  COTTON 

had  nothing  to  do  with  his  sentence;  and  that  "  soul- 
liberty,"  also,  though  undoubtedly  one  of  its  causes, 
was  not  its  only  occasion.  Williams  himself  has  re- 
corded with  approval  the  summary  of  the  grounds  of 
his  banishment  formulated  by  Governor  Haynes  in 
pronouncing  the  verdict,  as  involving: 1 

"  First,  That  we  have  not  our  Land  by  Pattent  from  the 
King,  but  that  the  Natives  are  the  true  owners  of  it,  and 
that  ws^ought  to  repent  of  such  a  receiving  of  it  by  Pattent. 

"  Secondly,  That  it  is  not  lawfull  to  call  a  wicked  person 
to  Sweare,  to  Pray,  as  being  actions  of  God's  worship. 

"  Thirdly,  That  it  is  not  lawfull  to  heare  any  of  the  Min- 
isters of  the  Parish  Assemblies  in  England. 

"  Fourthly,  That  the  Civil  Magistrates  power  extends 
only  to  the  Bodies  and  Goods,  and  outward  State  of  men." 

It  was  about  the  views  expressed  in  the  third  and 
fourth  of  these  articles  that  the  controversy  with  Cot- 
ton turned.  The  human  mind  is  often  a  strange  com- 
pound ;  and  Roger  Williams  illustrated  this  fact  by 
combining,  like  Robert  Browne  half  a  century  earlier, 
an  almost  modern  liberality  of  view  as  to  the  wrong- 
fulness  of  persecution  for  matters  of  religious  faith, 
with  the  most  strenuous  and  illiberal  attitude  of  critical 
hostility  to  the  Church  of  England.  The  same  spirit 
which  led  him  to  restrict  all  religious  observances  to 
the  companionship  of  the  really  regenerate,  so  that  a 
man  might  not  rightfully  pray  or  say  grace  over  the 

1  Williams,  Mr,  Cottons  Letter  lately  Printed,  Examined  and  Answered, 
pp.  4,  5.  London,  1644. 


JOHN  COTTON  83 

common  meal  if  an  unregenerate  member  of  his  family 
were  present,1  induced  him  to  hold  that  men  must 
repent  of  ever  having  been  associated  in  the  mixed 
congregations  of  the  Church  of  England,  and,  if  provi- 
dentially in  that  land,  should  hear  the  sermons  of  none 
of  its  ministers.  Williams  himself,  probably  in  1631, 
had  refused  the  very  office  of  teacher  held  by  Cotton 
in  the  Boston  church,  "  because  I  [he]  durst  not  offi- 
ciate to  an  unseparated  people  "  a — that  is,  to  a  people 
who  still  looked  upon  the  Church  of  England  as  a 
Christian  body,  for  the  Boston  church  was  fully  Con- 
gregational in  organization  and  government. 

It  was  these  views  that  induced  Cotton  soon  after 
Williams's  banishment,  perhaps  in  1637, 3  to  send  a 
letter  to  Williams,  which,  as  printed  in  1643,  contains 
an  epitome  of  its  purpose  in  its  title,  to  show  "  that 
those  ought  to  be  received  into  the  Church  who  are 
Godly,  though  they  doe  not  see,  nor  expressly  be- 
waile  all  the  polutions  in  Church-fellowship,  Ministry, 
Worship,  Government."  4  In  this  letter  Cotton  inci- 
dentally remarked  of  Williams's  banishment,  "  I  dare 
not  deny  the  sentence  passed  to  be  righteous  in  the 
eyes  of  God."  5  Roger  Williams  was  in  London  when 

1  Winthrop,  i.,  pp.  193,  194;  Cotton,  Reply  to  Mr.   Williams,  p.  9. 
London,  1647. 

2  Williams's  Letter,  in  Proc.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,  March,  1858,  p.  316. 

3  Cotton,  Reply  to  Mr.  Williams,  p.  i. 

4  London,    1643.       Reprinted   in    Publications   of  the  Narragansett 
Club,  i.  *  Ibid.,  p.  i. 


84  JOHN  COTTON 

this  already  six-years-old  letter  got  into  print,  appa- 
rently without  the  knowledge  of  Cotton  or  himself, 
and  he  naturally  answered  with  an  account  of  his  ban- 
ishment, but  even  more  with  a  defense  of  his  position 
regarding  the  proper  penitential  attitude  of  those  who 
came  out  of  the  Church  of  England.  To  this  answer  of 
1644,'  Cotton  replied  at  much  length  in  1647,  beating 
over  the  already  well-threshed  straw  of  discussion, 
without  indicating  any  change  of  view  on  his  own  part, 
or  apparently  effecting  any  on  that  of  Williams.8 

Contemporary  with  this  discussion,  wherein  Cotton 
defended  the  more  kindly  view  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land against  Williams,  ran  a  second  debate  between 
these  two  champions,  which  showed  Cotton  in  a  much 
less  pleasing  light  from  the  view-point  of  our  own  age, 
though  one  in  which  he  undoubtedly  had  the  approval 
of  most  of  his  associates  in  the  New  England  of  his 
day.  Here,  too,  the  discussion  began  by  an  inter- 
change of  written  papers,  long  before  it  came  into 
print.3  When  Williams  reached  England  on  his  visit 

1  Mr.   Cottons  Letter  lately  Printed \  Examined  and  Answered.     Re- 
printed in  Pub.  Narr.  Club,  i. 

2  This  Reply  to  Mr.  Williams  his  Examination  was  printed  as  an 
appendix  to  Cotton's  Blotidy  Tenent  Washed.     It  forms  the  principal 
content  of  Pub.  Narr.  Club,  ii. 

3  Williams's  and  Cotton's  recollections  disagreed  about  the  circum- 
stances  of   the   beginning    of   the   debate.     Cotton,   writing   in   1647, 
thought  that,  about  1635,  Williams  had  sent  him  a  letter  in  favor  of 
toleration  written  by  an   English  Baptist  prisoner,   and  that  he  had 
replied  to  it  speedily  in   an  essentially  private  letter.     According  to 
Williams's  memory,  the  interchange  of  papers  was  between  Cotton  and 


JOHN  COTTON  8$ 

of  1643,  the  question  of  religious  toleration  had  been 
brought  to  the  front  as  never  before,  the  Westminster 
Assembly  was  beginning,  the  religious  constitution  of 
the  land  was  to  be  remade,  and  Williams  determined 
to  put  his  views  before  the  public.  Therefore,  making 
Cotton's  brief  letter  of  1635  the  text,  he  put  forth  an 
elaborate  dialogue  in  1644,  entitled  The  Bloudy  Ten- 
ent,  of  Persecution,  for  cause  of  Conscience,  discussed,  in 
a  Conference  betiveene  Truth  and  Peace.1  To  this  Cot- 
ton replied  at  much  length  in  1647,  under  the  title  of 
The  Bloudy  Tenent,  Washed,  And  made  white  in  the 
b loud  of  the  Lamb  ;  and  in  1652  Williams  made  an  ex- 
tensive rejoinder:  The  Bloudy  Tenent  Yet  More  Bloudy 
by  Mr.  Cottons  Endeavour  to  wash  it  White  in  the  Bloud 
of  the  Lamb*  Cotton  did  not  live  to  give  further  an- 
swer, had  he  so  desired.  But  his  own  view  probably 
never  altered  from  that  which  he  expressed  in  1647: 8 

"  It  is  a  carnall  and  worldly,  and  indeed,  even  ungodly 
imagination,  to  confine  the  Magistrates  charge  to  the 
bodies,  and  goods  of  the  Subject,  and  to  exclude  them 
from  the  care  of  their  Soules." 

How  far  this  "  care  of  soules  "  might  go,  Cotton 
plainly  indicates : 4 

"  Better  a  dead  soule  be  dead  in  body,   as  well  as  in 

John  Hall  of  Roxbury,  and  that  from  the  latter  the  papers  came  into 
Williams's  hands.  See  Pub.  Narr.  Club,  iii.,  pp.  iv.,  v. 

1  Pub.  Narr.  Club,  iii.  3  Bloudy  Tenent,  Washed,  pp.  67,  68. 

*  Ibid.,  iv.  *  Ibid.,  p.  83. 


86  JOHN  COTTON 

Spirit,  then  to  live,  and  be  lively  in  the  flesh,  to  murder 
many  precious  soules  by  the  Magistrates  Indulgence." 

Certainly  in  this  argument  Williams,  rather  than  Cot- 
ton, has  been  justified  by  time. 

It  must  be  evident,  from  what  has  been  said,  that 
Cotton  held  a  ready  pen.  We  have  been  able  to 
glance  at  only  a  few  of  his  writings.  His  controversies 
already  considered  were  undoubtedly  the  most  dra- 
matic events  in  his  New  England  life,  but  they  were 
less  valuable  or  permanently  fruitful  than  the  series 
of  treatises,  published  chiefly  between  1640  and  1650, 
which  did  more  than  the  work  of  any  other  single 
laborer  to  fix  the  views  and  consolidate  the  polity 
of  our  churches.  Cotton  was  not  alone  in  this  work. 
Thomas  Hooker  and  Richard  Mather  did  a  very  sim- 
ilar service.  Probably  Hooker  was  a  greater  preacher 
and  a  more  efficient  and  far-sighted  organizer.  Cer- 
tainly Mather  was  singularly  gifted  in  explaining  and 
formulating  Congregational  polity.  But  while  others 
excelled  him  in  one  point  or  another,  in  the  full  circle 
of  his  talents  and  services,  and  in  the  degree  in  which 
he  was  viewed  as  the  characteristic  New  England  re- 
ligious pioneer  both  here  and  in  England  he  was  fore- 
most. 

Besides  the  unwearied  pulpit  activity  already  noted, 
many  fruits  of  which  were  published,  Cotton's  special 
treatises  did  much  to  direct  New  England  thought. 
Thus,  in  an  Answer  to  Mr.  Balls  Discourse  of  set  formes 


JOHN  COTTON  8/ 

of  Prayer,1  published  in  London  just  as  the  King  and 
Parliament  were  beginning  the  great  war  in  1642,  Cot- 
ton laid  down  the  principle  that  these  prescribed  peti- 
tions were  a  "  sinne  against  the  true  meaning  of  the 
second  Commandement. "  *  Extravagant  as  the  thought 
is,  it  undoubtedly  represented  and  strengthened  the 
then  prevailing  New  England  view.  Four  years  later 
came  Cotton's  Milk  _f or  Babes,  the  most  widely  used 
formula  for  youthful  instruction  in  New  England,  till 
the  Westminster  Shorter  Catechism,  prepared  largely 
by  Cotton's  assistant  and  successor  in  his  English  par- 
ish, Anthony  Tuckney,  gradually  displaced  it.  The 
next  year,  1647,  saw  the  publication  of  two  argumenta- 
tive treatises,  beside  the  Bloudy  Tenent,  Washed, 
already  referred  to.  One  was  entitled  Singing  of 
Psalmes  a  Gospel-Ordinance,  in  which  Cotton  argued 
against  all  who  believed  that  printed  songs  were  under 
the  same  condemnation  that  he  laid  on  printed  prayers. 
But  it  was  no  general  use  of  hymns  or  organs  that 
Cotton  urged.3 

"  We  hold  and  beleeve,  that  not  onely  the  Psalmes  of 
David,  but  any  other  spirituall  Songs  recorded  in  Scrip- 
ture, may  lawfully  be  sung  in  Christian  Churches,"  and 

1  John   Ball  was   an    excellent,   and    moderate,    Puritan  minister  at 
Whitmore,  Staffordshire.     In  the  year  of  his  death,  1640,  he  published 
an  admirably  written  little  volume,  entitled  :  A  Friendly  Triall  of  the 
Grounds  tending  to  Separation  ;    In  a  plain  and  modest  Dispute  touching 
the  Lawfulnesse  of  a  stinted  Liturgie  and  set  form  of  Prayer.     To  this 
Cotton  replied. 

2  Answer  to  Mr.  Ball,  p.  19.  *  Singing  of  Psalmes,  p.  15. 


88  JOHN  COTTON 

"  wee  grant  also,  that  any  private  Christian,  who  hath 
a  gift  to  frame  a  spiritual!  Song,  may  both  frame  it,  and 
sing  it  privately,  for  his  own  private  comfort.  .  .  .  Nor 
doe  we  forbid  the  private  use  of  an  Instrument  of  Musick 
therewithall." 

This  rejection  of  the  public  use  of  all  uninspired 
hymns  and  of  all  music  but  that  of  the  human  voice 
remained  characteristic  of  New  England  for  a  century 

after  Cotton  wrote. 

_- — 

The  other  tract  of  1647  was  a  plain,  simple  argu- 
ment in  favor  of  infant  baptism,1  its  one  hundred  and 
ninety-six  pages  having  been  written  originally  with 
no  thought  of  publication,  but  for  the  instruction  of  a 
son  of  members  of  Cotton's  church  in  old  England, 
who,  coming  to  America,  had  embraced  Baptist  beliefs. 
It  well  illustrates  Cotton's  laborious  pastoral  faithful- 
ness in  that  which  was  little  as  well  as  in  that  which 
was  greater  in  the  public  view.  The  same  long  con- 
tinuing pastoral  affection  induced  him,  in  1650,  to 
dedicate  to  the  people  of  his  former  charge  at  the 
Lincolnshire  Boston  his  essay  on  The  Holinesse  of 
Church-Members,  in  which  he  set  forth,  against  the 
objections  of  the  Scotch  Presbyterian  champions, 
Samuel  Rutherford  and  Robert  Baillie,  the  New  Eng- 
land view  that  only  persons  of  recognized  Christian 
character  should  be  admitted  to  the  full  privileges  of 
church  membership. 

1  The  Grovnds  and  Ends  of  the  Baptisme  of  the  Children  of  the  Faith- 
full.  London,  1647. 


JOHN  COTTON  89 

V 

But  the  tracts  of  greatest  repute  penned  by  Cotton 
were  those  in  which  he  exhibited  the  distinctive  traits 
of  Congregational  polity.  It  was  a  theme  on  which 
he  began  to  write  early  in  his  New  England  ministry. 
In  1642,  there  was  published  at  London  a  brief  sketch 
of  his  composition,1  begun  as  early  as  January,  1635, 2 
in  which,  in  the  course  of  thirteen  pages,  the  nature, 
membership,  officers,  worship,  sacraments,  and  disci- 
pline of  a  Congregational  church  were  set  forth  with 
abundant  proof-texts  and  much  plainness  of  definition. 
The  time  when  this  tract  was  issued  was  one  of  the 
epochal  years  in  English  history — in  August  the  great 
civil  war  broke  out,  in  October  the  first  bill  for  an 
Assembly  to  revise  English  religious  beliefs  and  insti- 
tutions passed  Parliament,  in  December  the  bill  for 
the  abolition  of  Episcopacy  was  introduced  into  the 
House  of  Commons.  In  such  a  period  of  discussion 
and  examination  of  the  religious  foundations  of  the 
land,  Cotton's  tract  naturally  aroused  the  attention  of 
those  Puritans  who  were  satisfied  neither  with  Episco- 
pacy nor  Presbyterianism.  It  passed  through  two 
editions  in  i642,>>and  a  third  in  1643.  But  this  sketch 
was  slight  and  elementary,  compared  with  one  written 
a  few  years  later  by  Cotton,3  and  sent  to  England  in 

1  The  Doctrine  of  the  Church,  etc. 

2  Another  draft  of  this  tract,  printed  as  Questions  and  Ansivers  tipon 
Church  Government,  in  A  Treatise  of  Faith,  etc.,  probably  of  1713,  in 
the  Library  of  Yale  University,  reads,  "begun  25.  n  m.  1634." 

3  See  Way  of  the  Churches,  "  Epistle  to  the  Reader," 


90  JOHN  COTTON 

manuscript,  probably  in  1643.  This  Way  of  the 
Churches  of  Christ  in  New  England  was  a  full  and 
elaborate  account  of  the  theory,  methods,  and  usages 
of  the  New  England  congregations,  and  is  one  of  the 
sources  of  prime  importance  for  any  picture  of  their 
nature,  organization,  and  worship,  during  their  first 
quarter  century  on  New  England  soil.  But  it  is  curi- 
ously illustrative  of  the  slow  publication  of  books  in 
those  days,  especially  of  books  that  had  to  cross  the 
ocean,  that  this  volume  had  so  considerable  a  circula- 
tion in  manuscript  that  it  was  answered  in  Prof.  Samuel 
Rutherford's  Due  right  of  Presbyteries  in  1644,  yet  did 
not  get  into  print  till  1645,  and  then  from  so  imper- 
fect a  transcript  of  the  original  manuscript  as  to  cause 
the  author  considerable  annoyance.1 

A  year  before  this  belated  appearance  of  the  Way 
of  the  Churches,  Cotton's  greatest  formative  treatise 
on  Congregational  polity  was  published  under  a  title 
characteristic  of  the  technicalities  of  seventeenth-cen- 
tury theologic  discussion :  The  Kcyes  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  It  had  been  sent  to  England  a  year 
later  than  the  Way,  and  its  composition  was  evidently 
subsequent  to  that  work.  It  is  a  careful,  clear,  and 
exceedingly  able  presentation  of  the  Congregational 
theory  of  the  Church,  as  it  lay  in  the  decidedly  un- 

1  Cotton,  Way  of  the  Cong.  Churches  Cleared,  part  ii.,  p.  2  ;  Increase 
Mather,  Attestation  to  Cotton  Mather's  Ratio  Discipline,  ii.  ;  Magnalia, 
i.,  p.  281. 


JOHN  COTTON  91         < 

democratic  minds  of  the  founders  of  Massachusetts.  v) 
In  size  it  is  about  one  half  that  of  the  Way  of  the 
CJiurcJies ;  and,  lacking  the  descriptive  qualities  of 
that  work,  it  is  less  interesting;  but  to  the  pains- 
taking student  it  demonstrates  its  value  as  sharing 
with  Hooker's  Survey  and  the  Cambridge  Platform  the 
honor  of  being  the  most  conspicuous  explanation  of 
early  Congregationalism.  But  something  more  than 
the  argumentative  force  therein  displayed  gave  dis- 
tinction to  the  Keyes ;  it  had  a  peculiar  timeliness 
in  its  appearance  that  gave  it  a  special  value  and 
use.  The  Westminster  Assembly  had  opened  its  ses- 
sions on  July  i,  1643.  Cotton  himself,  as  well  as  his 
New  England  associates,  Thomas  Hooker  and  John 
Davenport,  had  been  asked  by  influential  members  of 
the  English  Parliament  to  allow  their  names  to  be  in- 
cluded in  the  list  summoned  to  its  sessions,  and  had  it 
not  been  for  Hooker,  who  foresaw  the  hopeless  minor- 
ity in  which  the  Congregationalists  would  find  them- 
selves in  that  body,  he  would  have  done  so.1  Yet, 
though  no  New  Englanders  were  of  that  body,  there* 
were  five  prominent  Congregationalists/  and  perhaps 
as  many  more  less  pronounced  supporters  of  the  Con- 
gregational polity  in  the  Assembly.  On  a  count  of 
votes  they  made  small  show  against  the  Presbyterian 
majority ;  but  they  were  treated  with  great  respect  by 

1  Winthrop,  ii.,  pp.  gi,  92. 

9  They  were  Thomas  Goodwin,   Philip  Nye,  Sidrach  Simpson,  Jere- 
miah Burroughs,  and  William  Bridge. 


92  JOHN  COTTON 

that  majority,  because  of  the  growing  sympathy  for 
their  views,  especially  in  the  army. 

The  Congregationalists  in  the  Westminster  Assem- 
bly attacked  and  delayed  the  Presbyterians,  but  their 
own  support  in  the  country  at  large  was  made  up  of 
so  many  elements  that  it  was  much  easier  to  depend 
upon  it  for  aid  in  an  attack  on  a  polity  which  promised 
to  be  rigid  and  oppressive  than  in  the  formulation  of 
any  constructive  principles.  Desirous  of  advocating 
a  definite  Congregational  system,  and  yet  hesitant 
about  putting  their  names  to  any  exposition  of  it  of 
which  they  should  appear  to  be  the  authors,  these 
Congregationalists  in  the  Assembly  now  welcomed, 
published,  and  circulated  Cotton's  Keyes,  declaring  it 
to  be  the  "  Middle-way  between  that  which  is  called 
Brownisme,  and  the  Presbyteriall-government  "  ;  *  that 
is,  the  golden  mean  in  church  polity.  Thus  supported, 
it  had  an  influence  even  greater  in  England  than  in 
America,  and  was  looked  upon  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic  as  the  most  authoritative  exposition  of  Con- 
gregationalism set  forth  by  an  individual  writer.  That 
position  of  repute  it  cannot  be  said  to  have  lost2  even 
now,  though  it  is  no  longer  consulted  save  by  those 
of  antiquarian  tastes. 

These  two  works,  the  Way  of  the  Churches  and  the 
Keyes,  aroused  opponents  for  themselves  and  their 

1  Keyes,  "  To  the  Reader,"  by  Goodwin  and  Nye. 

2  Dexter,  Cong,  as  Seen,  pp.  433,  434. 


JOHN  COTTON  93 

author,  notably  Prof.  Samuel  Rutherford,  whose  Due 
right  of  Presbyteries^  has  already  been  mentioned;  an 
anonymous  pamphlet  entitled  Vindicice  Clavium :  or 
a  Vindication  of  the  Keyes  of  the  Kingdome  of  Heaven, 
into  the  hands  of  the  right  owners  ;  3  and  a  savage  per- 
sonal attack  from  that  ardent  Presbyterian  champion, 
Prof.  Robert  Baillie,  of  the  Westminster  Assembly,  in 
his  general  collection  and  refutation  of  supposed  here- 
sies, A  Dissuasive  from  the  Err  ours  of  the  Time*  To 
all  of  these  Cotton  replied  in  1648,  in  a  volume  full  of 
biographical  details  of  value,  the  Way  of  the  Congre- 
gational Churches  Cleared.  Already  recognized  as  the 
foremost  controversial  defender  of  the  New  England 
polity,  Cotton  was  naturally  chosen,  in  1646,  by  the 
Cambridge  Synod,  one  of  three  ministers  to  prepare 
a  "  model  of  church  government"4  for  submission 
to  the  body.  In  the  Cambridge  Platformy  actually 
adopted  in  1648,  preference  was  given  to  the  draft 
formulated  by  Richard  Mather,  but  considerable  use 
was  made  of  the  work  of  Cotton,  and  it  was  his  pen 
that  wrote  the  Preface  to  the  Platform  as  it  went  forth 
to  the  churches. 

Cotton  s  life  was  one  of  activity  almost  to  the  end. 
A  severe  cold,  caught  when  returning  from  a  sermon 
to  the  students  of  Harvard  College  in  the  autumn  of 
1652,  developed  into  more  extensive  complications  of 

1  London,  1644.  3  Ibid. 

2  Ibid,  1645.  4  Magnalia,  ii.,  p.  211. 


94  JOHN  COTTON 

the  respiratory  organs.  On  November  2ist,  he 
preached  for  the  last  time,  and  he  died  on  December 
23d,  in  the  fullness  of  the  Christian  hope.1 

It  must  have  been  with  a  sense  of  peculiar  bereave- 
ment that  the  people  of  New  England  met  the  loss  of 
such  a  religious  leader.  His  death  was  the  passing 
from  this  stage  of  human  affairs  of  one  who  had  been 
among  the  foremost  in  a  great  movement  in  old  Eng- 
land and  in  the  new ;  and  there  were  none  of  the  second 
generation  fully  able  to  take  his  place.  He  belonged 
to  a  world  of  great  activities,  he  had  borne  his  part  in 
a  struggle  of  national  proportions,  he  had  been  a 
leader  in  planting  a  new  continent.  The  generation 
that  succeeded  was,  of  necessity,  provincial ;  narrowed 
by  poverty,  struggle  with  the  wilderness,  and  isolation 
from  the  current  of  great  affairs.  With  the  going  of 
Cotton  and  Hooker,  and  the  other  leaders  of  the  hope- 
ful and  heroic  age  of  the  beginnings,  those  that  fol- 
lowed felt  that  a  glory  and  a  strength  had  departed 
from  the  land;  and  the  feeling  was  true.  But,  to  us, 
Cotton  stands  preeminently  as  a  typical  Puritan  min- 
ister, illustrative  alike,  in  his  virtues  and  his  defects,  in 
his  studiousness,  learning,  zeal,  moral  earnestness,  spir- 
ituality, breadth  of  interest  in  State  and  Church,  yet 
narrowness  of  sympathy  and  intolerance,  of  the  strength 
and  the  failings  of  the  remarkable  race  of  men  that 
founded  New  England. 

1  Mag nalia,  i.,  pp.  271-273. 


RICHARD  MATHER 


95 


III. 

RICHARD    MATHER 

IT  was  remarked,  in  speaking  of  Cotton,  that  he  was 
widely  and  justly  viewed  by  his  contemporaries  as 
the  typical  representative  of  New  England  religious 
thought.  Yet  New  England  has  never  had  any  ex- 
clusively commanding  expounder  of  its  characteristic 
ecclesiastical  polity.  Others  beside  Cotton  wrought  on 
the  fabric.  Others,  perhaps  even  more  than  he,  found 
delight  in  the  solution  of  the  problems  which  it  in- 
volved and  in  tracing  out  the  minuter  ramifications  of 
its  principles.  It  is  to  one  who  bore  large  part  in  all 
that  concerned  the  development  or  the  exposition  of 
the  Congregational  system  in  his  day  that  I  shall  call 
your  attention  in  this  lecture  —  that  is,  to  Richard 
Mather  of  Dorchester.  [Not  so  profound  a  scholar  as 
Cotton,  his  kindly  spirit  and  shrewd  common  sense,  no 
less  than  his  unfeigned  enjoyment  of  conventions  and 
debates,  made  him  in  no  opprobrious  sense  an  ecclesi- 
astical politician.  His  wisdom,  his  skill,  and  his  native 
leadership  give  him  rank,  if  not  as  the  first,  yet  among 
the  first  four  or  five  in  eminence  of  the  ministerial 
founders  of  New  England//) 

7  97 


98  RICHARD  MATHER 

Richard  Mather  was  of  Lancashire  origin,  the  son  of 
Thomas  Mather  and  of  Margaret  Abrams,  his  wife.1 
His  place  of  birth  was  the  village  of  Lowton,  just  out 
of  what  is  now  the  great  seaport  of  Liverpool,  but 
was  then  an  insignificant  harbor,  with  less  than  one 
hundred  and  fifty  families  dwelling  about  it.  The 
household  in  which  he  saw  light,  some  time  in  1596, 
was,  so  Increase  Mather  declared,2  in  reduced  circum- 
stances 15v  reason  of  "  unhappy  mortgages";  and  the 
few  glimpses  that  we  get  of  his  early  home  indicate 
that  it  was  one  in  which  expenditure  had  to  be  a  mat- 
ter of  careful  calculation.  Of  the  circumstances  of  his 
childhood  we  know  nothing,  and  the  motives  which 
induced  his  father  to  send  him  to  school  seem  to  have 
been  something  of  a  mystery  to  Richard  himself.3 
The  school  which  he  entered  was  typical  of  the  smaller 
preparatory  educational  institutions  scattered  at  that 
day  over  England.  That  land  then  had  no  national 

1  The  prime  source  regarding  Richard  Mather's  life  is  his  son  In- 
crease's Life  and  Death  of  that  Reverend  Man  of  God,  Mr.  Richard 
Mather.     Cambridge,  1670.     This  sketch  Cotton  Mather  incorporated, 
with  slight  changes,  in  the  Magnalia.     Horace  E.  Mather,  Lineage  of 
Rev.   Richard  Mather,   Hartford,  1890,  has  some  facts  of  value  ;  and 
J.  P.  Rylands  has  thrown  some  light  on  the  Mathers  of  Lancashire  in 
the  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Geneal.  Register,  xlvii.,  pp.  38,  177,  330.     Richard 
Mather  himself   kept   a   journal— to   his   thirty -ninth   year,   says  In- 
crease Mather.     The  part  relating  to  his  voyage  to  America  has  been 
frequently  published,   e.  g.,  Young,    Chronicles  of  Massachusetts,   pp. 
447-480.     The  remainder  is  lost.     Regarding  his  mother,  see  JV.  E. 
Hist,  and  Geneal.  Register,  liv.,  349. 

2  Increase  Mather,  Life  and  Death  of   .    .    .    Richard  Mather,  p. 
43,  ed.  of  1850.  3  Ibid.,  p.  43. 


RICHARD   MATHER  99 

system  of  elementary  public  instruction, —  indeed,  it 
was  to  have  none  till  1871, — but  private  beneficence, 
or  royal  favor,  had  founded  many  "grammar  schools  " 
where  preparation  for  Cambridge  or  Oxford  could  be 
obtained.  These  were  the  schools  which  our  ancestors 
sought  to  introduce  when,  in  1647,  Massachusetts 
enacted  the  celebrated  statute,  ordering  that l 

"  where  any  towne  shall  increase  to  ye  numbr  of  100  families 
or  househouldrs,  they  shall  set  up  a  gramer  schoole,  ye- m1 
thereof  being  able  to  instruct  youth  so  farr  as  they  may  be 
fited  for  ye  university." 

They  were  in  a  true  sense  the  ancestors  of  our  great 
academies;  though  they  gave  as  little  prophecy  of  the 
growth  and  fruitage  exhibited,  for  instance,  in  the 
foundation  which  has  made  Andover  famous,  as  the 
Harvard  of  1642  revealed  of  the  generous  university 
of  to-day. 

The  particular  "  grammar  school  "  to  which  Richard 
Mather  was  sent  was  at  Winwick,  four  miles  from 
Lowton.  The  institution  had  been  founded  not  far 
from  seventy  years  before  Mather  became  its  pupil,  and 
endowed  with  a  rent  of  £10  annually.2  The  gift  seems 
small  enough,  but  the  impulse  thus  imparted  has 
proved  sufficient  to  carry  the  Winwick  Grammar 
School  to  our  own  day ;  though  its  modest  quarters, 
not  larger  than  a  good-sized  dwelling-house,  show 

1  Records  of   .     .     .    Massachusetts,  ii.,  p.  203. 

9  H.  E.  Mather,  Lineage  of  Richard  Mather,  p.  31. 


100  RICHARD  MATHER 

that  it  has  never  been  one  of  the  more  famous  seats  of 
preparatory  education.  Here  Richard's  parents  boarded 
the  boy  in  winter;  but  in  summer  household  poverty 
impelled  him  to  walk  the  eight  miles  that  measured 
the  distance  from  his  home  to  school  and  back  daily. 

The  boy's  school  life  was  not  without  its  trials. 
Neither  home  nor  school  discipline  was  then  unwilling 
to  employ  the  rod  for  the  correction  of  almost  all 
offenses,  trifling  or  grave.  But  Mather's  master  was 
notorious  for  his  harshness,  so  that  the  boy  begged 
his  father  again  and  again  to  be  allowed  to  abandon 
the  scholar's  life.  Yet,  though  Mather  when  grown 
to  manhood  never  quite  forgave  the  brutality  of  his 
teacher,1  he  was  honest  enough  to  recognize  that 
to  that  teacher's  discernment  he  owed  his  scholarly 
career.  For,  by  the  entreaties  and  remonstrances  of 
his  severe  instructor  his  father  was  persuaded  to  put 
aside  an  attractive  offer  of  an  apprentice's  position  in 
the  neighboring  town  of  Warrington,3  which  impressed 
both  father  and  son  as  too  good  a  business  opportunity 
to  be  let  slip. 

How  long  Richard  Mather  studied  at  Winwick  is 
uncertain,  but  at  fifteen  he  was  ready  for  the  uni- 
versity and  would  gladly  have  gone  thither.  Such  a 
preparation  did  not  imply  the  precocity  which  enabled 
his  grandson,  Cotton  Mather,to  graduate  from  Harvard 

1  See  his  remarks  in  I.  Mather,  Life  and  Death  of  .  .  .  Richard 
Mather,  p.  44.  *  Ibid.,  p.  45. 


RICHARD  MATHER  IOI 

at  the  same  age,  sixty-six  years  later;  but  it  cer- 
tainly shows  much  confidence  in  the  stability  and 
thoroughness  of  the  boy  that,  on  the  invitation  of  the 
people  of  Toxteth  Park,  now  within  the  limits  of  Liv- 
erpool, he  at  this  early  age  became  first  master  of  their 
new-founded  grammar  school.  The  duties  of  such  a 
position  were,  indeed,  not  what  now  fall  to  the  share 
of  the  head  of  a  preparatory  school.  The  original 
conditions  to  be  fulfilled  for  entrance  at  Harvard 
doubtless  represent  with  substantial  accuracy  the  na- 
ture of  the  instruction  which  Mather  was  expected  to 
instill  into  his  pupils.  It  was  true  then,  as  in  New 
England  in  1642,  that 1 

"  When  any  Schollar  is  able  to  understand  Tully,  or  such 
like  classicall  Latine  Author  ex  tempore,  and  make  and 
speake  true  Latine  in  Verse  and  Prose,  suo  ut  aiunt  Marte  ; 
And  decline  perfectly  the  Paradigim's  of  Nounes  and  Verbes 
in  the  Greek  tongue:  Let  him  then  and  not  before  be 
capable  of  admission  into  the  Colledge. " 

But  the  work  was  well  done  by  the  youthful  teacher ; 
and  the  six  years  between  1612  a  and  1618,  which  were 
spent  by  Mather  in  instruction  at  Toxteth  Park,  were 
formative  in  many  respects.  Chief  in  the  experiences 
which  came  to  him  in  his  foundation  years  was  his 
conversion.  We  know  little  of  the  religious  influences 
of  his  home,  but,  judged  by  the  fact  that  Richard's 

1  Sibley,  Harvard  Graduates,  i.,  p.  1 1. 

2  Anthony  Wood,  Athencz  Oxienses,  ii.,  p.  427,  gives  the  date  of  his 
going  to  Toxteth  Park  as  1612. 


102  RICHARD   MATHER 

father  had  no  scruples  in  consenting  to  apprentice  him 
to  a  Roman  Catholic,1  they  cannot  have  been  of  a 
strongly  Puritan  character.  The  sermons  of  Rev.  Mr. 
Palin  of  Leigh  had  already  impressed  him ;  but  the 
immediate  occasion  of  his  spiritual  awakening  was  the 
Christian  example  of  the  family  of  Edwin  Aspinwall,  of 
Toxteth  Park,3  of  which  family  the  young  schoolmaster 
was  a  member.  It  was  an  intense  spiritual  struggle 
through  which  Mather  passed.  Touched  by  a  sermon 
preached  in  his  hearing  by  Rev.  John  Harrison,  the 
non-conforming  Puritan  vicar  of  Histon;  alarmed  by 
the  searching  tract  of  the  powerful  Cambridge  preacher, 
William  Perkins,  on  the  extent  to  which  a  man  may 
go  forward  in  an  apparently  religious  life  and  yet  be 
one  of  the  reprobate  ;  impressed  by  the  Christian 
character  of  the  household  in  which  he  lived,  Mather 
passed  through  despairing  agonies  of  soul,  till,  some 
time  in  i6i4,3  he  attained  peace  and  comfort  in  the 
conscious  acceptance  of  the  Gospel.  We  shall  have 
occasion  to  see,  later,  that  this  struggle  was  natural  to 
Mather's  temperament ;  but  more  than  temperament 
lay  behind  it.  The  intense,  introspective,  self-exam- 
inatory,  exacting  conceptions  which  the  Puritans  en- 
tertained of  the  process  of  conversion,  of  the  dangers 
of  self-deception  connected  with  it,  and  of  the  contrast 
in  feeling  and  life  which  should  distinguish  him  who 

1  Increase  Mather's  Life  and  Death  of  .   .   .  Richard  Mather,  p.  45. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  48.  3  Wood,  A  thence  Oxienses,  p.  427. 


RICHARD   MATHER  103 

was  a  Christian  from  him  who  was  not,  made  these 
struggling  spiritual  births  seem  the  normal  method  of 
entrance  into  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Mather's  experi- 
ences brought  him  out  a  Puritan. 

It  would  not  appear  that  Mather's  conversion  was 
followed  by  an  immediate  determination  to  enter  the 
ministry.  For  four  years  more  he  remained  the  head 
of  the  school  at  Toxteth  Park,  till  desire  for  a  further 
education  drove  him  to  Oxford.  May  9,  1618,'  saw 
his  entrance  into  the  student  body  of  Brasenose  Col- 
lege. But  his  university  experiences  were  brief.  Al- 
ready a  man  of  much  learning  and  decided  maturity 
of  mind,  and  about  twenty-two  years  of  age,  the  peo- 
ple of  Toxteth  Park  gave  the  most  conspicuous  testi- 
mony possible  to  the  character  and  repute  of  their 
former  schoolmaster  by  inviting  him  to  become  their 
minister.  Mather  accepted  the  call,  and  on  November 
30,  1618,  entered  on  his  labors,  his  first  sermon,  as  is 
not  uncommon  with  those  of  young  ministers  who 
have  anything  to  say,  being  marked  by  an  attempt  to 
present  matter  sufficient,  so  his  son,  Increase,  declared, 
for  six  ordinary  discourses.3  Like  the  early  Puritans 
generally,  Mather  preached  without  notes ;  and  one  is 
reminded  of  Judge  Samuel  Sewall's  youthful  experi- 
ences in  the  pulpit,  when,  nervous  with  excitement, 
he  dared  not  watch  the  hour  glass,  and,  fearful  lest  he 

1  Wood,  Athena  Oxienses,  p.  427. 

2  Increase  Mather,  ibid.,  p.  50. 


104  RICHARD  MATHER 

defraud  the  congregation  of  some  portion  of  their  dues, 
he  held  forth,"  ignorantly  and  unwillingly,"  he  records, 
for  "  two  hours  and  a  half."  1 

But  whatever  may  have  been  the  infelicities  of  his 
first  discourse,  the  people  of  Toxteth  Park  liked  the 
young  preacher,  with  his  "  loud  and  big"  voice,  his 
"  deliberate  vehemency  "  of  utterance,  and  his  "  awful 
and  very  taking  majesty"  of  pulpit  manner.2  They 
renewed  their  request  that  he  become  their  pastor, 
and  accordingly  Mather  procured  ordination  at  the 
hands  of  Thomas  Morton,  Bishop  of  Chester.3  It 
shows  clearly  the  intensity  of  the  feeling  of  opposition 
to  the  episcopal  system  which  the  fathers  of  New 
England  entertained  that  Mather  came  later  to  expe- 
rience, as  his  son  records,4  "  no  small  grief  of  heart  " 
at  the  recollection  of  this  conformity;  and,  years 
later,  when  the  same  son,  rummaging  in  boyish  fashion 
in  his  father's  study  in  the  raw  New  England  town, 
discovered  a  torn  parchment,  he  was  told  by  the  then 
middle-aged  Mather  that  the  document  was  a  memorial 
of  this  ordination  at  Bishop  Morton's  hand ;  but,  to 
quote  Mather's  own  words  to  the  youthful  questioner,6 
"  I  tore  it  because  I  took  no  pleasure  in  keeping  a 
monument  of  my  sin  and  folly  in  submitting  to  that 
superstition,  the  very  remembrance  whereof  is  grievous 
to  me." 

1  Sewall's  Diary,  i.,  p.  9.     1878.  3  Increase  Mather,  Life,  p.  50. 

2  Cotton  Mather,  Magnolia,  i.,  p.  452.  4  Ibid.  5  Ibid. 


RICHARD  MATHER  1 05 

Mather's  change  of  attitude  toward  his  ordination 
illustrates  the  fact  that  Puritan  opposition  to  the  cere- 
monies and  government  of  the  Church  of  England  was 
a  development.  From  the  beginning  of  his  ministry 
he  was  Puritan  in  sentiment.  He  never  wore  the  sur- 
plice.1 Yet  he  habitually  preached  on  the  holy  days; 
though  for  the  characteristic  Puritan  reason  that 2 
"  there  was  then  an  opportunity  to  cast  the  net  of  the 
Gospel  among  much  fish  in  great  assemblies,  which 
then  were  convened,  and  would  otherwise  have  been 
worse  employed,"  rather  than  by  reason  of  any  special 
sanctity  in  the  days  themselves.  In  his  ideals  of  preach- 
ing Mather  undoubtedly  represented  the  typical,  pains- 
taking Puritan  conception.  Like  Cotton  and  Hooker, 
he  preached  over  large  portions  of  Scripture  in  his 
English  ministry,  setting  forth  sections  of  Proverbs, 
the  Psalms,  Isaiah,  Luke,  Romans,  Timothy,  John, 
and  Jude.3  To  his  own  people  at  Toxteth  Park  he 
preached  twice  every  Sunday,4  and,  not  content  with 
his  home  ministration,  he  maintained  a  "  Tuesday 
Lecture  "  every  other  week  at  Prescot,  some  six  or 
seven  miles  from  his  home,  and  preached  frequently 
in  other  towns  in  Lancashire.5 

Some  six  years  after  his  ministry  began,  on  Sep- 
tember 2g,  1624,  he  married  Katherine  Holt,  a  daugh- 
ter of  a  resident  of  position  in  Bury,  about  twenty 

1 1.  Mather,  Life,  p.  56.  3  I.  Mather,  Life,  p.  54. 

2C.  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  447.  *  Ibid.,  p.  52.  5  Ibid. 


106  RICHARD   MATHER 

miles  from  Toxteth  Park.  The  courtship  was  pro- 
tracted; the  reason  of  the  delay  being,  as  Increase 
Mather  records,1  "  her  Father's  not  being  affected 
towards  Nonconformable  Puritan  ministers."  Mar- 
riage was  followed  by  the  purchase  of  a  house  at  Much- 
Woolton,  three  miles  from  Toxteth  Park,2  and  the 
establishment  of  the  young  minister  and  his  bride  in 
very  comfortable  surroundings,  with  every  prospect 
of  a  peaceful,  honored,  and  successful  ministry. 

But,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  years  following 
Mather's  settlement  at  Toxteth  Park  were  years  of 
increasing  religious  and  political  confusion  in  England. 
James  I.  closed  his  troubled  career  of  resistance  to  the 
growing  demands  of  the  Commons  and  of  opposition 
to  the  Puritan  wing  of  the  Church  six  months  after 
the  marriage  of  the  young  Toxteth  clergyman.  The 
year  1628  saw  the  elevation  of  that  opponent  of  all 
that  Puritanism  represented,  William  Laud,  to  the 
head  of  the  great,  Puritanly  inclined  bishopric  of 
London;  it  witnessed  also  the  beginnings  of  the  Puri- 
tan colonization  of  Massachusetts  in  the  settlement  of 
Endicott  and  his  associates  at  Salem.  The  year  1629 
beheld  the  dismissal  of  Parliament,  not  to  meet  again 
till  eleven  years  had  passed  and  the  country  stood  on 
the  eve  of  the  great  civil  war.  In  1633,  Laud  himself 
was  raised  to  the  primacy  of  the  English  Church 
through  his  elevation  to  the  see  of  Canterbury,  and 

1  I.  Mather,  Life,  p.  51.  *  Ibid.,  p.  52. 


RICHARD  MATHER  IO/ 

the  powers  of  Church  and  State,  united  in  his  own 
person  as  Primate  and  Prime-Minister,  were  directed, 
as  never  before  in  England  since  Protestantism  ob- 
tained firm  footing  with  the  accession  of  Elizabeth,  to 
the  enforcement  of  ceremonial  and  liturgical  uniformity 
in  ecclesiastical  affairs.  Mather's  parish  was  aside 
from  the  main  currents  of  English  life,  and  these 
events  for  a  long  time  seem  to  have  occasioned  him 
little  disturbance,  nor  does  he  appear  to  have  busied 
himself,  as  did  Davenport,  Cotton,  and  Hooker,  for 
instance,  with  the  beginnings  of  the  Puritan  settle- 
ment of  Massachusetts.  Doubtless  his  people  at 
Toxteth  Park  largely  sympathized  with  him.  It  was 
at  Prescot,  where  he  conducted  a  Tuesday  lectureship, 
rather  than  in  his  home  parish,  that  his  Puritanism 
attracted  unfavorable  notice.  But  the  growing  strict- 
ness which  Laud  infused  into  the  administration  of 
the  Church  of  England  would  allow  no  man  of  promi- 
nence long  to  escape  scrutiny;  and,  in  August,  1633, 
Mather  found  himself  suspended  from  his  ministry  for 
non-conformity: — the  offense  charged  being,  appar- 
ently, omission  of  the  disputed  ceremonies.  Influential 
friends  in  Lancashire  procured  his  restoration  in  No- 
vember of  the  same  year,  but  it  was  only  a  brief  res- 
pite, and  a  few  months  later,  visitors  representing 
Archbishop  Richard  Neile  of  York  inhibited  his  min- 
istry permanently.1 

1 1.  Mather,  Life,  pp.  54,  55. 


108  RICHARD  MATHER 

The  growing  difficulties  of  his  pastorate,  thus  culmi- 
nating in  its  abrupt  termination,  set  Mather  anew  to 
studying  the  foundation  principles  of  church  govern- 
ment; and  the  investigation  not  merely  confirmed  his 
previous  Puritanism,  but  left  him  a  radical  of  the  Puri- 
tan party.  He  now  determined  to  go  to  New  Eng- 
land—  a  decision  which  he  argued  out,  pen  in  hand, 
in  a  curious  series  of  reasons  that  has  come  down  to 
our  own  time;1  and  the  determination  was  strength- 
ened by  a  letter  from  Thomas  Hooker,  and  possibly 
one  also  from  John  Cotton,  both  of  whom  were  already 
in  the  new  land.2  And  so,  in  April,  1635,  Mather,  his 
wife,  his  four  children,  and  a  considerable  number  of 
his  friends  and  associates  made  the  journey  to  the 
West  of  England  seaport  of  Bristol,  where  they  were 
to  take  their  ship.3  Their  voyage,  of  which  Mather 
has  preserved  a  most  graphic  account  in  his  journal,4 
was  illustrative  of  the  delays  of  navigation  in  those 
days  —  delays  due  as  much  to  the  inefficiency  of  the 

1  I.  Mather,  Life,  pp.  57-68. 

2  An  extract  from  that  of  Hooker  is  given,  ibid.,  p.  69.     It  has  been 
suggested  with  some  plausibility  that  the  letter  of  Cotton,  dated  De- 
cember 3,  1634,  in  Young,  Chronicles  of   .     .    .    Mass.,  pp.  438-444, 
was  to  Mather. 

3  Cotton  Mather  (Magnalia,  i.,  p.  449),  following  his  father,  Increase, 
states  that  Richard  Mather  was  compelled  to  make  his  way  to  Bristol  in 
disguise.     Such  testimony  is  probably  accurate  ;  yet  Mather's  journal 
plainly  shows  that  his  journey  was  rather  a  leisurely  one,  and  that  he 
encountered  no  such  difficulties  in  getting  out  of  the  reach  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical authorities  as  Cotton  and  Hooker  experienced  in  1633. 

4  Young,  Chronicles  of    .     .    .    Mass.,  pp.  447-480. 


RICHARD  MATHER  1 09 

human  agents  as  to  the  uncertainties  of  the  winds  and 
waves.  After  waiting  a  month  at  Bristol  for  the  ship 
to  make  ready,  they  embarked  on  May  23d ;  but  did 
not  sail  till  June  4th,  and  then,  till  June  22d,  they 
lay  in  harbors  or  tried  in  vain  to  get  clear  of  the 
land.  Once  fairly  at  sea,  an  easy  and  prosperous 
voyage  carried  them  almost  to  their  journey's  end,  till, 
on  August  1 5th,  when  anchored  off  the  Isles  of  Shoals, 
a  West  Indian  hurricane,  famous  as  the  great  storm  of 
early  New  England  history,  caught  them  in  its  giant 
grasp,  and  nearly  caused  their  destruction;  but,  at 
last,  on  August  17,  1635,  they  landed  safely  at  Boston. 
Here  Mather  settled  temporarily,  till  he  could  look 
about  for  a  more  permanent  home;  and  here  he  and 
his  wife  joined  the  church  of  which  Wilson  and  Cotton 
were  pastor  and  teacher,  on  confession  of  their  faith, 
October  25,  1635.' 

Such  a  man  could  not  long  remain  without  a  parish ; 
and  Mather  was  soon  invited  to  settle  over  the  May- 
flower church  at  Plymouth,  the  congregation  at  Rox- 
bury,  and  that  at  Dorchester.  The  advice  of  Cotton 
and  Hooker  determined  him  to  accept  the  latter  call. 
The  situation  at  Dorchester  was  curiously  illustrative 
of  the  migratory  character  of  the  first  settlers  of  New 
England.  A  church,  organized  at  Plymouth,  Eng- 
land, in  March,  1630,  under  the  joint  pastorate  of  John 
Warham  and  John  Maverick,  had  settled  there  and 

1  Savage,  Notes  to  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  218.     1853. 


1 10  RICHARD  MATHER 

founded  the  town  in  the  early  summer  of  1630.  But, 
by  the  autumn  of  1635,  its  numbers  were  largely  emi- 
grating to  what  was  soon  named  Windsor,  Conn.,  and 
in  the  summer  of  1636,  if  not  earlier, — the  same  season 
that  Thomas  Hooker  and  his  Cambridge  congregation 
removed  to  Hartford, —  its  surviving  minister,  War- 
ham,  followed  his  flock  to  Connecticut  and  completed 
the  transfer  of  its  organization  to  the  new  location. 
So  completely  did  the  church  of  1630  abandon  its  Dor- 
chester home  that  it  was  felt  necessary  that  a  new 
church  should  be  gathered,  and  of  this  new  congrega- 
tion, Richard  Mather  was  asked  to  become  the 
"  teacher."  ' 

The  organization  of  the  new  Dorchester  church  was, 
however,  beset  with  difficulties  that  cast  an  illumi- 
nating light  upon  the  thoroughness  of  that  examina- 
tion of  candidates  for  church  membership  which  early 
New  England  demanded.  Under  the  impulse  of  the 
controversies  aroused  by  Roger  Williams,  the  Massa- 
chusetts legislature,  in  March,  1636,  had  passed  a  law 
forbidding  the  formation  of  any  further  churches  with- 
out first  informing  and  obtaining  the  approval  of  "  the 
magistrates  &  the  elders  of  the  great1  p'te  of  the 

1  The  editors  of  the  Records  of  the  Pirst  Church  at  Dorchester,  vii.- 
xxiii.,  try  to  show  that  the  churches  of  Windsor,  Conn.,  and  of  Dor- 
chester, are  equally  entitled  to  date  back  to  that  organized  in  1630  ;  but 
there  can  be  no  question  that  what  Mather  was  called  to  preside  over  as 
teacher  was  a  newly  organized  church,  even  if  it  contained  some  who 
were  members  of  the  church  of  1630,  who  did  not  care  to  remove  from 
Dorchester  to  Windsor. 


RICHARD  MATHER  III 

churches  "  '  in  the  colony.  This  statute,  more  than 
anything  else,  caused  the  gathering  of  a  council  at  the 
organization  of  a  church  to  become  a  regular  part  of 
Congregational  procedure.  It  was  under  this  enact- 
ment, then  not  a  month  old,  that  Mather  and  his 
associates  in  the  new  Dorchester  enterprise  made  ap- 
plication for  the  prescribed  civil  and  ecclesiastical  ap- 
proval. The  magistrates  and  ministers  gathered  on 
April  ist,  and  Winthrop,  who  was  undoubtedly  pres- 
ent, records  their  experiences.3  The  examination  was 
thorough.  The  confession  of  faith  presented  by  the 
associates  in  the  would-be  church  was  satisfactory  ;  but 
when  the  council  examined  into  the  spiritual  life  of 
each  of  the  proposed  members,  they  found  only  Mather 
and  one  other  of  the  candidates  worthy  of  approval, 
since  "  most  of  them  had  builded  their  comfort  of  sal- 
vation on  unsound  grounds  "  3 — so  Winthrop  and  the 
rest  of  the  assembled  magistrates  and  ministers 
thought  : 

"  viz.,  some  upon  dreams  and  ravishes  of  spirit  by  fits; 
others  upon  the  reformation  of  their  lives ;  others  upon  duties 
and  performances,  wherein  they  discovered  three  special 
errors;  i.  That  they  had  not  come  to  hate  sin,  because  it 
was  filthy,  but  only  left  it,  because  it  was  hurtful.  2.  That, 
by  reason  of  this,  they  had  never  truly  closed  with  Christ 
(or  rather  Christ  with  them).  ...  3.  They  expected  to 
believe  by  some  power  of  their  own,  and  not  only  and 
wholly  from  Christ." 

1  Records  of    .     .    .    Mass.,  i.,  p.  168. 

*  Journal,  i.,  pp.  218,  219.     1853.  ' Ibid.,  p.  219. 


112  RICHARD   MATHER 

Just  how  they  satisfied  these  conscientious  critics  of 
their  spiritual  estate  we  do  not  know;  but  nearly  five 
months  later,  on  August  23,  i636,1  the  church  was  at 
last  organized,  by  Mather  and  six  associates,  "  with 
the  approbation  of  the  magistrates  and  elders."  *  To 
them  many  others  were  speedily  added.  Of  this 
church  Mather  remained  the  "  teacher  "  till  his  death, 
nearly  thirty-three  years  later.  Several  colleagues 
were,  indeed,  briefly  associated  with  him,  of  whom 
the  first  was  Rev.  Jonathan  Burr,  once  rector  at  Rick- 
ingshall  in  Suffolk,  whose  short  pastoral  relation  to  the 
Dorchester  church,  begun  in  1640,  was  ended  by  his 
untimely  demise  in  August,  1641. 3  His  settlement 
gave  rise  to  one  of  the  earlier  of  New  England  advisory 
councils,  for  Mather  suspected  him,  apparently  with 
some  show  of  justification,  of  those  "  higher  life" 
views  then  branded  as  "  Familism."  The  matter  be- 
ing laid  before  the  Dorchester  church,  Burr  wrote  a 
long  statement  of  his  opinions,  from  which  Mather 
culled  a  series  of  alleged  "  errors,"  and  reported  them 
to  the  church  without  first  exhibiting  his  unsavory  list 
to  Burr.  The  latter  was  naturally  incensed ;  and,  as 
Winthrop  records,  "  it  grew  to  some  heat  and  aliena- 
tion." But  it  also  led  to  a  desire  for  a  mutual  council, 
and  on  February  2,  1640,  some  ten  of  the  neighboring 
pastors,  with  Gov.  Thomas  Dudley  and  John  Win- 

1  Records  of  the  First  Church  at  Dorchester,  pp.  i,  2. 

2  Winthrop,  i.,  p.  231.         3  See  Magnalia,  i.,  pp.  368-375. 


RICHARD  MATHER  113 

throp  to  represent  the  lay  membership,  met  at  Dor- 
chester, and  after  four  days'  patient  hearing  of  the  case 
came  to  the  sensible  conclusion  that  "  both  sides  had 
cause  to  be  humbled  for  their  failings,"  *  and  that  they 
be  "  advised  to  set  a  day  apart  for  reconciliation." 
The  advice  was  happily  successful,  for  the  suspected 
young  minister  fully  renounced  his  supposed  errors, 
and,  as  Winthrop  records: 

"  Mr.  Mather  and  Mr.  Burr  took  the  blame  of  their  fail- 
ings upon  themselves,  and  freely  submitted  to  the  judgment 
and  advice  given,  to  which  the  rest  of  the  church  yielded  a 
silent  assent." 

Mather's  second  colleague  was  Rev.  John  Wilson, 
of  the  first  class  that  graduated  from  Harvard  College, 
but  the  relationship  lasted  only  from  1649  to  1651, 
when  Wilson  entered  on  a  pastorate  of  forty  years' 
duration  at  Medfield.2  William  Stoughton,  Mather's 
parishioner,  afterward  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts, often  preached  for  him,  and,  it  is  said,  six  or 
eight  times  declined  a  colleague  settlement.3  But,  for 
the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  America  Mather  was  the 
sole  minister  of  the  Dorchester  church,  and  the  pastor- 
ate was  a  time  of  internal  peace  and  growth  for  the 
congregation.  Yet,  as  I  have  already  intimated,  it  was 
not  always  a  time  of  spiritual  calm  for  the  pastor  him- 
self. The  early  ministers  of  New  England  were  as 

1  For  this  council  and  its  doings,  see  Winthrop,  ii.,  pp.  26-28. 

2  Sibley,  Graduates  of  Harvard,  i.,  p.  65.         *  Ibid.,  i.,  pp.  195,  196. 


114  RICHARD  MATHER 

strenuous  in  their  own  self-examination  as  in  that  of 
others.  John  Warham,  who  removed  with  his  church 
from  Dorchester  to  Windsor,  Conn.,  just  before  Mather 
came  thither,  would  sit  unparticipating  at  the  Lord's 
table  where  he  broke  the  bread  and  poured  the  wine 
for  others,  feeling  his  own  unworthiness  to  partake.1 
William  Tompson,  Mather's  ministerial  neighbor  alike 
in  old  England  and  the  new,  was  even  more  griev- 
ously a  prey  to  melancholy  thoughts  of  his  spiritual 
state.2  And  Mather's  spiritual  course,  for  several  years 
after  coming  to  Dorchester,  was  one  of  doubt  and 
struggle,  or,  as  his  grandson  phrases  it,  of  "  internal 
desertions  and  uncertainties  about  his  everlasting  hap- 
piness;"3 doubts  which  he  did  not  impart  to  his 
people,  but  which  long  made  his  ministry  a  period  of 
distress  to  him ;  till,  partly  by  the  clearing  of  his  own 
spiritual  vision,  and  partly  through  the  spiritual  com- 
forting of  John  Norton  of  Ipswich  and  Boston,  he 
came  at  length  into  inward  peace ;  so  that  the  latter 
part  of  his  American  pastorate  was  as  much  a  satisfac- 
tion to  himself  as  a  source  of  strength  to  others. 

Our  present  interest  is,  however,  in  Mather's  rela- 
tions to  the  development  of  Congregationalism,  rather 
than  in  his  somewhat  uneventful  experiences  in  his 
New  England  pastorate.  Though  by  no  means  so 
voluminous  a  writer  as  his  son,  Increase,  or  his  grand- 
son, Cotton,  Richard  Mather  held  a  ready  pen,  and 

1  Magnolia,  i.,  p.  442.  2  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  439.  8 Ibid.,  i.,  p.  451. 


RICHARD  MATHER  1 15 

though  Rev.  John  Cotton's  first  brief  sketch  of  ecclesi- 
astical polity  1  was  written  several  years  earlier  than 
any  treatise  by  Mather,  the  latter's  Church-Government 
and  Church  Covenant  Discussed  was  the  first  elaborate 
defense  and  exposition  of  the  New  England  theory  of 
the  Church  and  its  administration  to  be  put  forth  in 
print.  Mather's  volume  was  drawn  out  by  a  series  of 
thirty-two  questions  covering  the  whole  range  of 
church  practice  in  the  new  land.  These  inquiries 
were  sent  over  to  him  by  some  of  his  former  minis- 
terial associates  in  Lancashire  or  Cheshire2  in  1638  or 
early  in  1639;  and  Mather's  answer  was  written  and 
despatched  to  England  in  the  latter  year,  though  it 
was  not  put  into  print  till  1643,  and  then  with  a  title 
which  made  no  mention  of  Mather's  name,  but  ascribed 
its  authorship  collectively  to  "  the  Elders  of  the  severall 
Churches  in  New  England  "  —  a  title  deserved  indeed 
by  the  merit  of  its  exposition,  but  not  warranted  by 
the  facts.3  In  this  tract  Mather  informed  his  English 
querists  that  in  Massachusetts  more  heads  of  families 
were  church  members  than  were  not,  and  "  likewise 
sundry  children  and  servants."  He  described  the 
New  England  churches  as  neither  "  meerly  Demo- 

1  Doctrine  of  the  Chtirch,  etc.    London,  1642,  begun  in  January,  1635. 

2  Cotton,  Way  of  the  Churches  Cleared,  p.  70. 

a  On  its  authorship,  see  Cotton,  Reply  to  Mr.  Williams,  his  Examina- 
tion, in  Pub.  Narragansett  Club,  ii.,  p.  103  ;  Nathanael  Mather,  Preface 
to  Disputation  Concerning  Church-Members,  p.  7,  London,  1659  ;  In- 
crease Mather,  Order  of  the  Gospel,  p.  73,  Boston,  1700. 

4  Church-Government  and  Church  Covenant  Discussed^  pp.  7,  8. 


Il6  RICHARD  MATHER 

craticall  or  meerly  Aristocraticall  ";J  he  affirmed  the 
full  power  of  a  company  of  Christian  men  and  women, 
even  as  few  as  four  or  five  if  need  be,  to  form  a  church, 
self-governing  in  every  respect,  and  choosing  and  or- 
daining its  own  officers;  he  denied  to  women  the  right 
to  vote  in  church  affairs;  he  defined  the  duties  of 
pastors  and  teachers,  answered  questions  as  to  the 
churchly  character  of  English  parish  assemblies,  and 
the  status  of  those  who  came  from  them  to  New  Eng- 
land. In  fact,  Mather  gave  his  readers  a  treatise  which 
was  not  only  the  most  careful  explication  of  the  "New 
England  way  "  that  had  yet  appeared,  and  an  effective 
contribution  to  the  great  debate  regarding  polity  which 
renewed  its  strength  in  England  with  the  opening  of 
the  Westminster  Assembly,  but  one  which  presents 
our  best  picture  of  how  Congregational  polity  actually 
shaped  itself  in  the  minds  of  its  creators  within  ten 
years  of  the  establishment  of  the  first  Puritan  church 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

It  illustrates  the  care  with  which  these  early  Puritans 
worked  out  the  problems  of  ecclesiastical  polity  which 
were  to  them  of  such  vital  importance,  that,  in  the 
same  year  in  which  Mather's  answers  to  the  Thirty- 
two  Questions  were  prepared,  he  drafted  an  extensive 
essay  on  that  basal  compact  of  a  Congregational 
church  —  the  covenant.  This  essay,  so  Richard 
Mather's  son  Nathanael  records,  "  he  wrote  for  his 

1 Church-Government  and  Church-Covenant  Discussed,  p.  57. 


RICHARD  MATHER 

private  use  in  his  own  Study,  never  intending,  nor  in- 
deed consenting  to  its  publication  " ; 1  but,  three  thou- 
sand miles  from  convenient  printing,  it  was  not  easy 
for  New  England  ministers  to  control  their  manu- 
scripts, and  four  years  after  this  private  investigation 
was  written,  it  appeared  in  England,  printed  probably 
from  a  copy  lent  to  his  ministerial  neighbor,  John 
Cotton,3  with  a  title-page  which  declares  it  to  be  "  an 
answer  to  Master  Bernard  "—that  is,  to  Rev.  Richard 
Bernard  of  Batcombe,  an  earnest  Puritan,  but  a  no  less 
earnest  opponent  of  the  Congregationalism  which,  years 
before,  under  the  influence  of  John  Robinson,  he  had 
been  almost  persuaded  to  embrace.  And,  as  if  to 
make  the  title  still  more  erroneous,  the  work,  as  pub- 
lished, bore  on  its  face,  An  Apologie  of  the  Churches  in 
New  England  for  Church-Covenant.  It  is  a  close-knit 
argument,  written  in  popular  style,  to  prove  "  that  a 
company  [of  Christians]  becomes  a  Church,  by  joyning 
in  Covenant."  3  But  this  leads  ultimately  to  the  ques- 
tion :  "  Doth  not  this  doctrine  blot  out  all  those  Con- 
gregations [of  England]  out  of  the  Catalogue  of 
Churches  "  ?  *  to  which  Mather  replies,  as  nearly  all  early 
New  England  divines  did,  by  denying  the  existence  of 
a  National  Church  in  the  home  land,  but  at  the  same 
time  affirming  that  the  parishes  of  England,  by  their 
union  for  various  acts  of  worship,  their  baptismal  vows, 

1  Preface  to  the  Disputation  Concerning  Church- Members,  p.  7. 
*  Ibid.  3  Apologie,  p.  5.  *  Ibid.,  p.  36. 


Il8  RICHARD  MATHER 

and  other  similar  agreements,  were  congregations 
actually  bound  together  by  a  real,  though  implicit  and 
imperfect  covenant,  and  hence  were  true,  though  im- 
perfect, churches.1  And,  finally,  he  replies  to  the 
possible  objection  that  a  covenant  was  not  taught  by 
the  founders  of  New  England  before  their  emigration 
from  their  native  land  by  asserting  that  "  some  of  us 
when  we  were  in  England,  through  the  mercie  of  God, 
did  see  the  necessitie  of  Church-Covenant ;  and  did  also 
preach  it  to  the  people  amongst  whom  we  ministred, 
though  neither  so  soone  nor  so  fully  as  were  meete  "  a 
—  a  statement  which  we  have  already  seen  was  true 
regarding  Cotton  in  his  Lincolnshire  parish.3 

Mather  bore  his  personal  part  also  on  other  occasions 
in  the  great  debate  regarding  the  constitution  of  the 
Church  into  which  the  civil  war  threw  England.  The 
New  England  Congregationalists  felt  that  the  battle 
was  their  own  as  truly  as  that  of  their  Puritan  brethren 
who  remained  in  the  home  land ;  and  they  felt  an 
added  interest  in  defending  and  championing  their 
own  system  against  the  Presbyterian  critics  who  were 
dominant  in  the  Westminster  Assembly,  and  were 
there  formulating  the  creed,  ritual,  and  organization 
of  the  English  Church,  as  men  fondly  believed,  for  all 
time.  As  a  contribution  to  the  questions  at  issue, 
and  impelled  by  a  meeting  of  the  ministers  of 

1  Apologie,  pp.  36-41. 

9  Ibid.,  p.  44.      3  Way  of  the  Congregational  Churches  Cleared,  p.  20. 


RICHARD  MATHER  119 

New  England  held  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  under  the 
moderatorship  of  John  Cotton  and  Thomas  Hooker  in 
September,  1643,  where  some  incipient  signs  of  Pres- 
byterianism  in  the  New  England  colonies  were  frowned 
upon,1  Richard  Mather  united  with  his  friend  William 
Tompson  of  Braintree  in  what  was  entitled  A  Modest 
and  BrotJierly  Answer  to  Mr.  Charles  Herle,  his  Book 
against  the  Independency  of  ChurcJies?  This  was  a  brief 
and  vigorous  reply  to  a  tract  with  the  descriptive  title, 
The  Independency  on  Scriptures  of  the  Independency  of 
Churches,  then  recently  published  3  by  Charles  Herle, 
who  was  at  the  time  of  this  interchange  of  pamphlets 
the  rector  of  that  Winwick  where  Mather  went  to  school 
as  a  boy,  and  was  soon  to  be  also  the  Prolocutor  of  the 
Westminster  Assembly  itself.  Samuel  Rutherford's 
important  critique  of  Congregationalism,  The  Due 
right  of  Presbyteries,  which  appeared  the  same  year  that 
Mather's  reply  to  Herle  was  printed,  drew  forth  from 
Mather  an  answer  published  in  1647,  to  be  followed  by 
the  even  more  elaborate  refutations  by  Thomas  Hooker 
and  John  Cotton  printed  the  next  year.  Mather's 
own  method  of  conducting  debate  was  extremely 
courteous  for  that  age,  when  religious  controversy 
was  too  often  an  interchange  of  opprobrious  epithets: 4 

"  As  for  bitternesse  of  spirit  and  tartnesse  of  contests,"  said 

1  Winthrop,  ii.,  p.  165  ;  Walker,  Creeds  and  Platforms,  pp.  137-139. 

2  London,  1644.  3  London,  1643. 
4  A  Reply  to  Mr.  Rutherford,  "  Epistle  Dedicatory,"  p.  v. 


120  RICHARD   MATHER 

he,  "  I  never  thought  that  to  be  Gods  way  of  promoting 
truth  amongst  brethren.  .  .  .  For  those  that  give  apparent 
Testimonies  that  they  are  the  Lord's,  and  so  that  they  must 
live  together  in  heavens,  I  know  not  why  they  should  not 
love  one  another  on  earth,  what  ever  differences  of  appre- 
hensions may  for  the  present  be  found  amongst  them  in 
some  things." 

The  services  to  the  cause  of  New  England  Congre- 
gationalism just  considered  were  personal  and  self- 
initiated,  however  fully  representative  the  books 
described  may  have  been  of  the  general  beliefs  and 
practices  of  New  England.  But  the  labors  at  which 
we  shall  now  glance  were  of  a  more  public  and  dele- 
gated nature.  First  in  point  of  time  to  attract  our 
attention  is  Mather's  conspicuous  share  in  the  pro- 
duction of  what  is  usually  known  as  the  Bay  Psalm 
Book.  That  translation  grew  directly  out  of  the  gen- 
eral Puritan  conviction,  shared  and  intensified  by  the 
fathers  of  New  England,  that  nothing  should  find  place 
in  the  public  service  of  song  but  the  lyrics  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. The  version  of  the  Psalms  in  general  use  in 
England  at  the  time  that  the  Puritans  came  to  New 
England  was  that  prepared  by  Thomas  Sternhold, 
John  Hopkins,  and  others,  then  generally  bound  with 
the  Prayer  Book.  It  had  seemed  too  inexact  a  render- 
ing to  the  scholarly  "  teacher  "  of  the  London  Con- 
gregational church,  Henry  Ainsworth,  in  his  exile  in 
Amsterdam;  and,  in  1612,  he  had  published  a  version 
that  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  brought  with  them  across 


RICHARD  MATHER  121 

the  Atlantic,  which  was  in  use  at  Plymouth  for  seventy 
years,  and  was  also  employed  at  Salem  and  elsewhere. 
But  even  this  careful  paraphrase  did  not  seem  to  the 
founders  of  New  England  a  sufficiently  literal  and  un- 
interpolated  version  of  the  inspired  words.  Anxious 
to  secure  the  most  faithful  rendering  possibly  con- 
sistent with  such  remaining  concessions  to  English 
meter  as  usableness  in  song  absolutely  required,  a 
number  of  Massachusetts  ministers  undertook,  in  1639, 
a  new  translation.1  Chief  among  them  were  Richard 
Mather,  Thomas  Welde,  and  John  Eliot,  the  mission- 
ary to  the  Indians.  The  result  was  the  publication 
from  the  newly  established  press  at  Cambridge  in  1640 
of  the  Whole  Booke  of  Psahnes — a  volume  which  enjoys 
the  distinction  of  being  the  first  book  printed  in  the 
English  colonies.  Mather's  share  in  it  was  conspicu- 
ous. Besides  his  contributions  to  its  versions,  he  pre- 
pared the  Preface,  and  therein  announced  the  object 
of  the  work  to  be:  "Rather  a  plain  translation  then  to 
smooth  our  verses  with  the  sweetness  of  any  para- 
phrase." Probably  the  resulting  compositions  were  as 
melodious  as  essentially  unpoetic  men  could  be  ex- 
pected to  produce  under  the  severe  limitations  of  a 
faithful  translation ;  yet  the  result  was  far  enough  re- 
moved from  what  modern  taste  would  approve.  The 
rendering  of  the  twenty-third  Psalm  shows  the  work 
at  fully  its  average  height  of  merit : 

1  See  Mather,  Magnolia,  i. ,  p.  407. 


122  RICHARD  MATHER 

"  The  Lord  to  mee  a  shepheard  is, 

want  therefore  shall  not  I 
He  in  the  folds  of  tender  grasse, 
doth  cause  me  downe  to  lie  : 

"  To  waters  calme  mee  gently  leads 

Restore  my  soule  doth  hee  : 
he  doth  in  paths  of  righteousnes 
for  his  names  sake  leade  mee  ; " 

while  selections  like  the  following  from  the  fifty-first 
Psalm  reveal  the  more  laboring  side  of  the  attempt 
to  be  at  once  literal  and  singable : l 

"  Create  in  mee  cleane  heart  at  last 

God  :  a  right  spirit  in  mee  new  make. 
Nor  from  thy  presence  quite  me  cast, 
thy  holy  spright  not  from  me  take. 

"  Mee  thy  salvations  joy  restore, 

and  stay  me  with  thy  spirit  free. 
I  will  transgressors  teach  thy  lore 
and  sinners  shall  be  turned  to  thee." 

But  the  standards  of  our  own  age  are  not  those  of  an- 
other, and  if  successive  editions  of  a  volume  are  any 
test  of  merit,  this  laborious  translation  possesses  ample 
claims  to  regard,  for  it  was  in  popular  use  in  New 
England  for  more  than  a  century,  and  even  obtained 
a  considerable  foothold  in  Scotland  and  England ; 
while  its  editions  number  at  least  seventy. 

Already  so  identified  with  the  exposition  and  the 
furtherance  of  Congregationalism  in  New  England,  it 
was  but  natural  that,  when  the  Congregational  churches 

'Compare  Tyler,  History  of  American  Literature,  i.,  p.  276. 


RICHARD  MATHER  12$ 

undertook  to  formulate  their  polity  in  a  united  declara- 
tion, Mather  should  have  a  large  share  in  the  work. 
That  time  came  with  the  gathering  of  the  Cambridge 
Synod  in  1646.  New  England  men  had,  from  the 
first,  been  ready  to  give  a  reason  for  their  practices, 
but  the  meeting  of  the  Westminster  Assembly  made 
a  united  presentation  of  principles  more  than  ever  de- 
sirable.1 That  body,  it  was  well  known,  was  preparing 
a  confession  of  faith,  an  order  of  worship,  and  a  pat- 
tern of  church  government,  which,  if  approved  by  Par- 
liament, would  be  the  legal  standard  of  England  and 
Ireland;  and  might  readily  be  extended  to  the  Ameri- 
can colonies.  The  majority  in  the  Assembly  were 
well  known  to  be  jure  divino  Presbyterians.  And,  be- 
sides this  danger  of  forcible  interference  with  New 
England  institutions  by  Parliamentary  action  from 
without,  there  were  not  a  few  critics  of  Congrega- 
tionalism in  New  England  itself,  some  opposing  its 
limitation  of  access  to  the  Lord's  Supper  to  pro- 
fessed disciples  of  Christ;  others  finding  cause  of  com- 
plaint in  its  restriction  of  baptism  to  the  children 
of  church  members;  still  others  dissenting  from  any 
baptism  of  children  at  all;  or  opposing  its  reference 
of  church  acts  ultimately  to  the  votes  of  the  mem- 
bership. These  critics  made  no  secret  of  their  readi- 
ness to  appeal  to  the  now  Presbyterianly  inclined 

1  The  Cambridge  Synod  is  discussed  with  a  good  deal  of  fullness  in 
Walker,  Creeds  and  Platforms,  pp.  157-237. 


124  RICHARD  MATHER 

Parliament  of  England,  if  necessary,  for  forcible 
interference  with  the  exclusive  supremacy  of  the 
"  New  England  way."  It  was  high  time  that  the 
polity,  and,  if  necessary,  the  creed  of  New  Eng- 
land should  be  clearly  defined ;  and,  therefore,  on 
May  15,  1646,  the  Massachusetts  legislature  called 
on  all  the  churches  in  the  various  Congregational  colo- 
nies to  meet,  on  September  1st,  at  Cambridge  for  a 
synod.  Into  the  details  of  the  doings  of  that  body 
there  is  no  need  for  us  here  to  enter.  The  essential 
point  for  our  notice  is  that  it  decided  to  define  the 
polity  of  New  England,  and  appointed  Richard  Mather 
of  Dorchester,  John  Cotton  of  Boston,  and  Ralph 
Partridge  of  Duxbury  each  to  prepare  tentative  drafts 
of  Platforms  for  submission  to  the  synod's  considera- 
tion. It  was  not  till  its  third  session,  in  August,  1646, 
that  the  synod  came  to  a  full  discussion  of  these  sug- 
gested outlines  of  polity;  but  at  that  time,  Mather's 
draft  was  preferred,  and  though  largely  amended,  and 
reduced  to  half  its  original  size,  by  the  synod,  the 
Cambridge  Platform  is  his  work.  Mather  did  not, 
indeed,  write  all  sections  anew.  In  its  composition  he 
made  large  use  of  what  he  and  Cotton  had  already 
written  on  Congregational  government.  Perhaps  Cot- 
ton wrote,  or  revised,  some  sections  of  the  Platform  as 
finally  adopted  ;  but  the  work  was  essentially  Mather's. 
It  was  the  natural  consequence  of  this  authorship 
that  the  Massachusetts  ministers,  in  1651,  appointed 


RICHARD  MATHER  12$ 

Mather  to  answer  the  criticisms  of  the  Platform,  which 
had  been  referred  to  them  by  the  Legislature.  Of  the 
Platform  itself  time  will  scarcely  permit  us  to  speak. 
Interest  in  it  is,  indeed,  now  historic  rather  than  prac- 
tical, but  it  remains  the  most  valuable  monument  of 
Congregationalism  as  it  lay  in  the  minds  of  the  first 
generation  after  nearly  twenty  years  of  experience  on 
New  England  soil.  Its  basal  principle,  that  "  the 
partes  of  Church-Government  are  all  of  them  exactly 
described  in  the  word  of  God;  "  and  "  that  it  is  not 
left  in  the  power  of  men,  officers,  Churches,  or  any 
state  in  the  world  to  add,  or  diminish,  or  alter  any 
thing  in  the  least  measure,"  '  we  few  of  us  hold  ; 
but  had  not  the  men  of  that  age  believed  it  with  all 
intensity  of  conviction  there  would  have  been  no  New 
England.  We  may  read  with  curious  eyes  its  chapters 
on  the  duties  of  pastors,  teachers,  and  ruling  elders, 
on  the  maintenance  of  church  officers,  on  the  power 
of  magistrates  in  ecclesiastical  matters;  but  though 
here  and  there  the  Platform  is  as  archaic  in  practice  as 
it  is  everywhere  in  expression,  one  leaves  it  with  the 
conviction  that  it  sets  forth  with  the  utmost  plainness 
the  abiding  features  of  Congregationalism. 

In  Mather's  original  draft  of  the  Cambridge  Platform, 
but  omitted  by  the  synod  because  of  the  strenuous 
opposition  of  a  few,  was  a  paragraph  declaring  that a 

Chapter  i.,  sec.  3. 

2  Walker,  Creeds  and  Platforms,  p.  224. 


126  RICHARD  MATHER 

"  such  as  are  borne  in  ye  ch:  as  members,  though  yet  they 
be  not  found  fitt  for  ye  Lords  Supper,  yet  if  they  be  not 
culpable  of  such  scandalls  in  Conversation  as  do  justly  de- 
serve ch:  Censures,  it  seemeth  to  vs,  wn  they  are  marryed 
&  have  children,  those  their  children  may  be  reed  to 
Baptisme." 

The  quotation  gives  us  a  glimpse  into  the  most  seri- 
ous controversy  which  disturbed  the  first  century  of 
New  England  religious  life  —  that  over  the  Half-Way 
Covenant.1  It  was  one  in  which  Mather  bore  a  con- 
spicuous share,  and  to  the  decision  of  which  in  the  way 
it  was  settled  by  the  first  and  second  generation  on 
New  England  soil  he  powerfully  contributed.  The 
question  involved  in  the  Half-Way  Covenant  debate 
has  often,  but  wholly  erroneously,  been  declared  to  be 
political.  None  but  church  members,  it  is  said,  were 
allowed  to  vote  —  a  statement  true  of  Massachusetts 
till  1664,  and  in  a  modified  degree  till  1684,  and  of 
New  Haven  colony  till  1665,  but  never  of  Plymouth 
or  Connecticut.  It  was  to  increase  the  voting  list  — 
it  has  been  affirmed  —  that  an  easier  method  of  en- 
trance into  church  fellowship  was  sought.  But  the 
controversy  raged  as  hotly  in  Connecticut  and  Plym- 
outh as  in  Massachusetts,  and  naturally  so,  for  the 
question  was  in  fact  purely  religious,  and  Half-Way 
Covenant  membership  brought  with  it  no  political  priv- 
ileges, and  its  ecclesiastical  privileges  did  not  include 

1  The  controversy  is  described  with  considerable  fullness  in  Walker, 
Creeds  and  Platforms,  pp.  238-339. 


RICHARD  MATHER  127 

a  vote  in  churchly  concerns.  It  was  a  perplexing 
and  embarrassing  problem ;  but  its  essential  point  was 
not,  how  shall  the  State  enter  the  Church,  but  how 
shall  the  Church  retain  control  of  its  wandering  sons 
and  daughters. 

The  early  New  England  theory  of  the  Church  made 
the  rise  of  the  Half- Way  Covenant  discussion  inevit- 
able. That  theory  held  that  only  evident  Christians, 
of  well-tested  intellectual  faith  and  spiritual  experi- 
ences, conscious  of  the  transforming  power  of  God  in 
their  own  lives,  could  enter  into  the  covenant  which 
constituted  the  local  Church.  But  this  covenant,  like 
that  with  Abraham  of  old,  was  made,  so  early  Con- 
gregationalism held,  not  with  the  believer  alone,  but 
with  his  children.  Hence  there  were  two  ways  of 
entering  a  church ;  by  profession  of  personal  faith  and 
repentance,  and  by  birth.  But  how  about  the  member 
by  birth  who  when  grown  to  manhood  could  not  hon- 
estly claim  any  consciousness  of  a  work  of  God's  Spirit 
in  his  own  soul,  yet  was  faithful  in  prayer  and  worship 
and  in  parental  government  ?  Was  he  a  member  still  ? 
And,  if  he  was,  could  he  not  bring  his  own  children  to 
baptism  ?  And,  if  he  was  not  a  member,  when,  or 
by  what  act  on  his  part,  did  he  cease  to  be  one  ? 
When  had  the  Church  ceased  to  owe  him  watch  and 
discipline  ? 

To  the  solution  of  this  difficult  question  Mather 
early  directed  his  attention.  In  his  first  considerable 


128  RICHARD  MATHER 

treatise  on  Congregational  polity,  the  answer  to  the 
Thirty-Two  Questions,1  written,  it  will  be  remembered, 
in  1639,  Mather,  indeed,  took  the  ground  that 

"  Such  Children  whose  Father  and  Mother  were  neither 
of  them  Believers,  and  sanctified,  are  counted  by  the 
Apostle  (as  it  seemes  to  us)  not  federally  holy,  but  im- 
cleane,  whatever  their  other  Ancestors  have  been,  (i  Cor. 
7.  14).  And  therefore  we  Baptise  them  not." 

But  by  1645,  when  Mather  wrote  an  elaborate,  but 
unfortunately  never  published,  exposition  of  Congre- 
gational polity,2  he  had  advanced  to  the  position  thus 
expressed  by  question  and  answer : 3 

"  When  those  that  were  baptized  in  Infancy  by  the 
Covenant  of  their  Parents  being  come  to  Age,  are  not  yet 
found  fit  to  be  received  to  the  Lords  Table,  although  they 
be  married  and  have  Children,  whether  are  those  their 
Children  to  be  baptized  or  no." — "  I  propound  to  Con- 
sideration this  Reason  for  the  Affirmative,  viz.  That  the 
Children  of  such  Parents  ought  to  be  baptized:  the  Reason 
is,  the  Parents  as  they  were  born  in  the  Covenant,  so  they 
still  continue  therein,  being  neither  cast  out,  nor  deserving 

1  Church-Government  and  Church  Covenant  Discussed,  p.  22. 

2  Increase  Mather  says  (Life  and  Death  of    .     .    .    Richard  Mather, 
p.  84)  that  Richard  Mather  "  prepared  for  the  Press  an  Elaborate  Dis- 
course Entituled,  A  Plea  for  the  Churches  of  New  England,  divided 
into  two  Parts  :    The  former  being  an  Answer  to  Mr.  Rathbands  Nar- 
ration of  Church-Courses  in  New-England  ;  The  other  containing  Positive 
Grounds  from  Scripture  and  Reason,  for  the  Justification  of  the  Way 
of  the  Churches  in  New  England." 

3  This  bit,  the  only  portion  in  print,  as  far  as   I  am  aware,  of  the 
treatise  described  in  the  above  note,  is  given  in  Increase  Mather,  First 
Principles,  pp.  10,  u  ;  see  also  Walker,  Creeds  and  Platforms,  p.  252. 


RICHARD  MATHER  12§ 

so  to  be,  and  if  so,  why  should  not  their  Children  be  bap- 
tized, for  if  the  Parents  be  in  Covenant,  are  not  the  Children 
so  likewise  ?  " 

In  the  view  indicated  by  this  quotation  Mather  re- 
mained all  the  rest  of  his  life;  and  he  had  with  him  an 
ever-growing  proportion  of  the  New  England  ministry, 
for  to  him,  and  to  others,  it  seemed  that  to  abandon 
this  hold  upon  the  young  people,  and  recognize  no 
church  membership  in  those  "  born  in  the  covenant  " 
who  were  yet  not  conscious  disciples  of  Christ  was  to 
surrender  them  to  heathenism.  Passed  by  at  the  Cam- 
bridge Synod,  where,  if  pushed  to  a  vote,  it  would 
undoubtedly  have  received  the  support  of  a  majority, 
it  arousejd  increasing  discussion,  and  was  apparently 
first  put  in  practice  at  Ipswich  in  1656.  But,  by  that 
time,  Connecticut  was  so  aroused  on  the  subject  that, 
as  a  result  of  legislative  action  in  May  of  that  year,  a 
list  of  twenty-one  questions  was  sent  by  Connecticut 
to  the  Massachusetts  legislature,  which  promptly 
called  a  Ministerial  Convention,  to  meet  at  Boston  on 
June  4,  1657,  and  invited  all  the  colonies  to  be  repre- 
sented ; — an  invitation  willingly  accepted  by  Connect- 
icut, ignored  by  Plymouth,  and  vigorously  declined  by 
New  Haven  as  likely  to  lead  to  the  approval  of  the 
new  and  looser  method.  Mather's  name  is  the  first  in 
the  list  of  the  thirteen  ministerial  representatives  ap- 
pointed by  Massachusetts,1  and  his  hand  drafted  the 

1  Records  of    .     .     .     Mass.,  iv.,  part  i.,  p.  280. 


I3O  RICHARD  MATHER 

conclusions  in  which  the  Convention  summed  up  the 
results  of  the  fifteen  days  of  discussion.1  The  tract  is 
a  dialectically  acute,  clear,  and  often  forcible  docu- 
ment,2 setting  forth  with  the  utmost  distinctness  the 
position  that  those  who  were  of  the  Church  by  reason 
of  their  parents'  covenant  were  so  far  members,  even 
in  the  absence  of  any  conscious  work  of  grace  in  their 
own  hearts;  that  they  could,  in  turn,  present  their 
children  for  baptism,  provided  they  themselves  gave 
an  intellectual  assent  to  the  faith  of  the  Church  and 
seriously  assumed  its  covenant  obligations,  as  far  as 
they  were  able  in  their  unconverted  estate.  It  also 
made  equally  evident  the  view  of  the  Convention  that 
such  half-way  members,  so  long  as  they  remained 
without  personal  religious  experience,  should  not  be 
admitted  to  the  Lord's  Supper  or  to  a  vote  in  church 
affairs. 

Here  was  a  radical  departure  from  the  early  New 
England  theory  in  the  direction  of  the  "  parish  way  " 
of  old  England0  It  was  a  departure  which  ultimately 
worked  great  harm;  but  it  was  entered  on  by  good 
men  in  all  earnestness  of  pastoral  solicitude.  The 
Ministerial  Convention  did  not,  however,  abate  the 
discussion  in  Massachusetts  or  Connecticut,  and  so 

1  Dexter,  Cong,  as  Seen,  Bibliography,  p.  287.     The  original  is  in  the 
library  of  the  American  Antiquarian  Society  at  Worcester. 

2  It  was  printed  at  London  in  1659,  under  the  title  of  A  Disputation 
concering  Church-Members  and  their  Children  in  Answer  to  XXI  Ques- 
tions ;  large  extracts  are  given  in  Walker,   Creeds  and  Platforms,  pp. 
291-300. 


RICHARD   MATHER  131 

energetically  was  it  carried  on,  that  in  December, 
1661,  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  ordered  a  Synod 
of  all  the  churches  of  that  colony  to  meet  at  Boston 
on  March  II,  1662,'  to  "  consider  of  such  questions 
for  the  setling  of  peace  and  trueth  in  these 
churches."  To  this  peremptory  call  some  seventy 
ministers  and  delegates  responded.  The  Dorchester 
church  was  represented  by  its  pastor,  Richard  Mather, 
and  his  gifted  youngest  son,  Increase.2  It  was  a  stormy 
and  strenuously  contested  session  ;  but  when  the  battle 
was  over,  the  views  which  we  have  seen  Richard 
Mather  championing  in  the  Convention  of  1657  were 
reaffirmed  by  a  vote  of  seven  to  one;  yet  that  minor- 
ity contained  the  able  president  of  Harvard,  and  two 
of  Mather's  own  sons,  Eleazerand  Increase.  Richard 
Mather  did  not  this  time  draft  the  result  of  the  Synod ; 
but  it  was  not  in  a  Mather  to  withhold  his  pen,  and 
in  the  controversies  that  followed  he  was  as  active  in 
defense  of  the  decision  as  his  sons  were  in  opposing  it. 
Yet  I  am  not  aware  that  this  division  of  view  made 
any  separation  between  the  Mathers,  however  un- 
seemly such  contrariety  in  public  debate  may  appear; 
and  within  a  few  years,  even  before  his  father's  death, 
Increase  Mather  so  altered  his  opinions  that  he  was 
speedily  the  foremost  defender  of  the  principles  which 
he  attacked  at  the  synod. 

1  Records  of    .     .     .     Mass,  iv.,  part  ii.,  p.  38. 

2  Records  First  Church,  Dorchester,  p.  39. 


132  RICHARD   MATHER 

This  division  of  sentiment  suggests  the  fact  that, 
though  Richard  Mather  could  be  a  leader  of  conven- 
tions and  synods,  he  could  no  more  control  the  action 
of  his  own  church  on  this  point  than  regulate  the 
views  of  his  own  family.  As  early  as  March,  1655, 
Mather's  church  had  begun  to  debate  the  matter; 
but  it  had  then  "  seemed  strange  and  unsaffe  unto 
Divers  ";'  and  the  debate  had  dragged  on.2  Mather 
acquainted  the  church  with  the  doings  of  the  Synod, 
and  made  plain  his  own  wishes,  but  a  New  England 
church  was  then  no  more  the  unthinking  servant  of  its 
minister  than  it  now  is,  and  it  was  not  till  January  29, 
1677,  more  than  seven  years  after  Mather's  death,  that 
his  church  voted  to  practice  what  he  had  advocated.3 

Mather's  church  was  not  divided  on  this  issue.  He 
seems  to  have  been  too  good  a  pastor  to  force  his 
views,  however  strongly  held,  on  what  was  after  all  a 
minor  and  not  vitally  essential  feature  of  ecclesiastical 
practice,  to  the  point  of  open  quarrel  in  his  flock. 
But  not  all  the  churches  of  New  England  were  as  for- 
tunate as  his.  The  First  Church  in  Boston,  for  exam- 
ple,was  rent  on  the  issue.  Its  majority  was  strenuously 
opposed  to  the  larger  baptism,  and  called  that  eminent 
champion  of  the  older  ways  and  opponent  of  the  late 
Synod's  conclusions,  Rev.  John  Davenport  of  New 
Haven,  to  its  vacant  pastorate  in  1668.  Its  minority, 

1  Records  First  Church,  Dorchester,  p.  164. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  34-36,  40,  55,  168.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  69-75. 


RICHARD   MATHER  133 

favoring  the  larger  practice,  and  not  approving  some 
of  the  methods  and  circumstances  of  Davenport's  call, 
withdrew,  after  a  bitter  struggle  on  the  part  of  the  ma- 
jority to  retain  them,  and  repeated  advice  from  coun- 
cils, to  form  the  Third,  or  Old  South,  Church  in  Bos- 
ton.1 In  these  councils,  and  in  the  attempts  to  find 
an  honorable  and  peaceable  solution  of  the  disagree- 
ment, Mather  bore  his  full  share.  It  was  at  the  second 
of  these  advisory  councils,  where  he  was  serving  as 
Moderator,  on  April  16,  1669,  that  Mather  was  seized 
with  the  distressing  malady  which  six  days  later  ended 
his  earthly  pilgrimage.2  His  brief  illness,  though  of 
much  suffering,  was  of  much  patience;  and  the  one 
burden  on  his  heart  was  a  pastoral  lament  strikingly 
consonant  with  his  long  advocacy  of  the  Half-Way 
Covenant,  and  curiously  illumined  by  what  we  have 
seen  as  to  the  refusal  of  his  church  to  adopt  it.  To 
his  son,  Increase,  who  asked  a  last  message,  the  dying 
man  said  :3 

*'  A  special  thing  which  I  would  commend  to  you  is,  care 
concerning  the  rising  generation  in  this  country,  that  they 
be  brought  under  the  government  of  Christ  in  his  church, 
and  that  when  grown  up,  and  qualified,  they  have  baptism 
for  their  children.  I  must  confess  I  have  been  defective  as 


1  For  this  controversy  see  H.  A.  Hill,  History  of  the  Old  Sotith  Church, 
Boston,  i.,  pp.  13-112  ;  Records  First  Church,  Dorchester,  pp.  54,  58. 

2  The  stone,   with  total  stoppage.      See   Increase  Mather,  Life  a-nd 
Death  of  .    .    .    Richard  Mather,  pp.  78-80.     He  died  April  22,  1669. 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  79,  80. 


134  RICHARD  MATHER 

to  practice;  yet  I  have  publickly  declared  my  judgment  and 
manifested  my  desires  to  practice  that  which  I  think  ought 
to  be  attended;  but  the  dissenting  of  some  in  our  church 
discouraged  me.  I  have  thought  that  persons  might  have 
right  to  baptism,  and  yet  not  to  the  Lords  Supper:  and  I 
see  no  cause  to  alter  my  judgment,  as  to  that  particular." 

We  may  believe  the  remedy  which  he  commended 
for  the  laxity  of  the  young  people  of  his  time  a  bad 
one;  but  we  cannot  doubt  the  absolute  sincerity  of 
conviction  with  which  he  approved  it. 

So  passed  away,  at  the  ripe  age  of  seventy-three, 
one  of  the  most  useful  ministers  of  early  New  England. 
Not  so  brilliant  as  Cotton  or  Hooker,  he  was  a  strong, 
learned,  simple,  practical,  impressive  man,  a  good 
companion,  a  helpful  associate,  and  above  all  a  lover 
of  Congregationalism,  because  he  believed  it  the  way 
of  the  Scriptures.  He  died  rich  in  the  possession  of 
five  sons,  four  of  them  eminent  in  the  ministry;  rich 
also  in  the  grateful  recollection  of  many  services  well 
done  not  only  for  his  day  and  generation,  but  for  the 
development  of  the  branch  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
whose  interests  he  made  his  first  care. 


JOHN  ELIOT 


135 


IV. 

JOHN    ELIOT 

ANYONE  who  glances  over  a  general  catalogue, 
such  as  is  issued  by  Andover  Seminary,  must  be 
struck  first  of  all  by  the  number  of  names  of  those 
who,  while  faithful  servants  of  God  in  their  genera- 
tion, have  left  little  record  among  men.  Few  of  us 
can  expect  even  a  line  in  the  biographical  cyclopaedias 
of  a  century  hence.  It  is  to  that  truer  and  more  per- 
fect record  of  those  whose  names  are  written  in  heaven 
that  we,  most  of  us,  must  look  for  whatever  memorial 
is  to  abide  of  the  fact  that  we  have  lived  and  labored 
for  the  advancement  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  But, 
among  the  comparatively  limited  number  of  names 
which  arouse  recollection  as  of  historic  moment  as  one 
turns  the  pages  of  such  a  catalogue  as  I  have  men- 
tioned, a  few  seem  to  exhale  a  peculiar  fragrance  that 
inclines  the  reader  to  linger  on  them  with  special 
regard.  As  one  glances  through  the  list  of  those  con- 
nected with  Andover  in  the  first  three  years  of  its  ex- 
istence, what  pictures  of  consecration,  of  sacrifice,  and 
of  endeavor  the  names  of  Adoniram  Judson,  Samuel 
Newell,  Gordon  Hall,  and  Samuel  J.  Mills  conjure  up 

137 


138  JOHN  ELIOT 

before  the  mental  vision !  The  Church  proves  that  it 
has  never  lost  the  consciousness  of  that  primal  apos- 
tolic commission  in  this,  if  in  no  other,  way,  that  it 
feels  a  special  thrill  of  satisfaction  as  it  contemplates 
the  lives  of  its  missionaries.  Its  Pauls,  its  Columbas, 
its  Xaviers,  its  Careys,  its  Pattesons  stand  forth  to 
grateful  recollection  radiant  with  a  peculiar  charm 
which  attaches  to  none  of  its  dogmaticians,  teachers, 
or  administrators.  So  among  the  founders  of  New 
England,  the  name  of  John  Eliot,  known  since  1660 
as  the  "  apostle,"  '  draws  forth  remembrances  of  the 
most  winsome  aspects  of  Puritan  character,  and  shines 
with  a  luster  distinctly  its  own  among  the  leaders  of 
early  Congregationalism. 

John  Eliot  was  the  son  of  a  yeoman,  or  middle-class 
farmer,  Bennett  Eliot,  a  man  of  considerable  property, 
whose  home  was  at  Nazing,  county  of  Essex  —  some 
sixteen  miles  almost  directly  north  of  London.2  But 
though  Nazing  was  John's  boyhood  home,  the  fact 
that  he  was  baptized  at  Widford,  some  ten  or  twelve 
miles  yet  farther  northward  of  London,  on  August  5, 
1604,  in  the  church  of  St.  John  Baptist,  commemorated 
'in  Charles  Lamb's  well-known  poem,  The  Grandame, 
makes  it  probable  that  Widford  was  his  birthplace, 
since  our  modern  fashion  of  delayed  baptisms  .did  not 

1  So  first  named  by  Thomas  Thorowgood,  see  Dr.  Ellsworth  Eliot  in 
Appleton's  Cyclopedia  of  American  Biography,  ii.,  p.  321. 
9  See  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Geneal.  Register,  xxviii.,  pp.  140-145. 


JOHN  ELIOT  139 

obtain  in  the  England  of  that  day.  Widford,  more- 
over, was  the  place  of  the  marriage  of  his  parents, 
October  30,  1598.'  Of  his  boyhood  and  early  educa- 
tion we  know  little.  Cotton  Mather  has  preserved  a 
single  remark  of  Eliot's  that  shows  his  thankfulness  in 
old  age  for  the  memories  of  a  religious  home;8  but 
whatever  its  degree  of  religious  vigor,  the  spiritual  life 
of  his  parents'  home  would  not  appear  to  have  inclined 
to  Puritanism,  for,  in  March,  1619,  he  entered  Jesus 
College  at  Cambridge  instead  of  the  warmly  Puritan 
Emmanuel  College  of  that  University.  While  a  stu- 
dent here  his  father  died,  and  left  him  £8  a  year  for 
the  prosecution  of  his  education.8  And  here  Eliot 
graduated  a  Bachelor  of  Arts  in  1622.  What  next  em- 
ployed his  thoughts  we  do  not  know;  but  it  would  ap- 
pear probable  that  he  was  ordained  a  minister  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Our  first  definite  glimpse  of  him 
after  his  graduation,  however,  is  seven  years  later,  at  the 
close  of  1629,  or  the  beginning  of  1630,  when  we  find 
him  assisting  Rev.  Thomas  Hooker,  afterward  eminent 
among  the  founders  of  Connecticut,  in  teaching  a 
school  kept  by  Hooker  for  a  few  months  at  Little 
Baddow,4  a  country  village  about  thirty  miles  northeast 
of  London. 

1  See  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Geneal.  Register,  xlviii.,  p.  80. 

2  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  529. 

8  Buried  November  21,  1621  ;  will,  November  5,   1621  ;  IV.  E.  Hist, 
and  Geneal.  Register,  xxviii.,  p.  145  ;  Dr.  Ellsworth  Eliot,  as  cited. 
4  M agnalia,  i.,  p.  335. 


I4O  JOHN  ELIOT 

The  circumstances  which  had  compelled  Hooker1  to 
establish  this  school  were  typically  illustrative  of  the 
religious  state  of  England.  Thomas  Hooker  had  grad- 
uated at  Emmanuel  in  1608,  and  after  further  study  and 
service  as  catechist  and  lecturer  at  his  alma  mater,  had 
exercised  a  ministry  of  some  years  at  Esher,  a  hamlet 
of  Surrey,  till,  in  1626,  his  fame  as  a  preacher  led  to 
his  appointment  as  Puritan  lecturer  at  Chelmsford. 
These  lectureships  were  a  favorite  device  of  the  more 
earnest  Protestants  of  the  opening  years  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  to  secure  a  preaching  ministry  in  par- 
ishes where  the  legal  incumbent  was  unable  or  unwilling 
to  give  sermons  to  his  people.  Supplementary  services 
were  conducted,  occasionally  with  the  full  approval  of 
the  legal  rector,  by  ministers  of  sermonic  ability,  sup- 
ported by  the  gifts  of  sympathetic  hearers.  And  from 
his  Chelmsford  pulpit  Hooker  preached  a  deep,  search- 
ing, spiritual,  intensely  Calvinistic  and  powerfully 
awakening  series  of  discourses  that  won  him  the  sup- 
port of  the  more  earnest  element  of  the  region  round 
about.  But  Laud  viewed  the  lectureship  system  as  one 
of  the  chief  bulwarks  of  Puritanism,  to  the  extirpation  of 
which  he  had  set  himself.  In  spite  of  the  favorable  pe- 
tition of  a  large  portion  of  his  beneficed  clerical  neigh- 
bors, Hooker  was  silenced  in  1629;  and,  as  a  means 
of  earning  his  livelihood,  took  scholars  into  his  fam- 
ily in  the  quiet  retreat  of  Little  Baddow.  Even  this 

1  See  G.  L.  Walker,  Thomas  Hooker,  pp.  18-51. 


JOHN  ELIOT  141 

occupation  could  not  shield  Hooker  from  Laud,  and 
in  order  to  escape  imprisonment,  or  worse,  he  had  to 
flee  the  country,  finding  refuge  in  Holland  before  the 
close  of  1630. 

Eliot's  experiences  as  Hooker's  "  usher,"  or  assist- 
ant, in  the  Little  Baddow  school  were  therefore  brief; 
but  short  as  the  time  of  this  association  was  it  was 
permanently  influential  in  his  religious  life.  As  Eliot 
himself  later  said  of  his  sojourn  in  Hooker's  household  i1 

"  To  this  place  I  was  called,  through  the  infinite  riches 
of  God's  mercy  in  Christ  Jesus  to  my  poor  soul:  for  here 
the  Lord  said  unto  my  dead  soul,  live ;  and  through  the 
grace  of  Christ,  I  do  live,  and  I  shall  live  forever!  When 
I  came  into  this  blessed  family  I  then  saw,  and  never 
before,  the  power  of  godliness  in  its  lively  vigour  and 
efficacy." 

Eliot's  conversion  evidently  made  him  fully  a  Puri- 
tan, if  he  had  not  been  so  before;  and  he  seems  to 
have  entered  into  an  agreement  with  friends,9  some  of 
whom  were  from  his  home  village  of  Nazing,  to  be  a 
pastor  to  them  if  possible  in  the  New  World.  He 
doubtless  felt  that  the  opposition  which  drove  his 
friend  and  spiritual  father,  Thomas  Hooker,  into  exile 
would  make  it  impossible  for  him  to  exercise  an  effi- 
cient ministry  in  England.  Accordingly,  leaving  his 
"  intended  wife  "  to  follow  him,3  he  sailed  in  the  Lyon, 

1  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  336. 

4  See  his  own  statement  in  Roxbury  Church  Records,  in  Report  of  the 
Record  Commissioners,  City  of  Boston,  Document  114,  p.  76.  3  Ibid. 


142  JOHN  ELIOT 

and,  after  a  voyage  of  ten  weeks'  duration,  landed  at 
Boston,  November  4,  1631.' 

The  time  of  Eliot's  arrival  in  Boston  was  opportune. 
The  teacher  of  the  Boston  church,  John  Wilson,  had 
sailed  for  a  temporary  sojourn  in  England  in  April  pre- 
vious, and  the  Boston  congregation  gladly  welcomed 
Eliot's  services.  Eliot  himself  became  one  of  its 
members,  and  on  Wilson's  return,  in  1632,  the  Boston 
church  urged  upon  Eliot  with  insistence  the  position 
of  association  in  its  pastorate  which  was  a  year  later 
bestowed  on  John  Cotton.2  Eliot  felt  himself  bound 
to  his  English  friends,  some  of  whom  had  settled  at 
Roxbury,  where  a  church  had  been  formed  in  July, 
1632,  of  which  Rev.  Thomas  Welde  had  been  made 
pastor.  On  the  call  of  this  church  in  the  November 
following  its  organization,  just  a  twelvemonth  after 
his  arrival  in  Boston,  Eliot  entered  on  the  office  of 
"  teacher"  at  Roxbury,  which  he  was  to  occupy  for 
more  than  fifty-seven  years.3  He  had  already  gone  to 
Roxbury  to  live  some  months  before  his  settlement, 
for  the  first  marriage  recorded  in  that  place  is  that  of 
Eliot,  on  September  4,  1632,  to  Hanna  Mumford,  the 
betrothed  bride  who  had  followed  him  from  England, 
— a  woman  of  remarkable  abilities  and  consecration  of 
spirit,  a  true  helper  to  him  in  his  life  work,  of  whom 

1  Winthrop,  i.,  pp.  76,  77,  80. 

*  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  in.     He  was  offered  the  teachership. 

3  Ibid.  ;  Roxbury  Church  Records,  p.  76. 


JOHN  ELIOT  143 

he  could  say,  as  she  lay  in  her  coffin  after  fifty-five 
years  of  companionship,  that  she  was  a  "  dear,  faithful, 
pious,  prudent,  prayerful  wife."  Indeed,  it  was  to 
her  careful  management  of  his  worldly  affairs  that 
Eliot  owed  whatever  measure  of  outward  comfort  —  a 
very  moderate  measure  be  it  said  —  that  he  attained. 
Like  Jonathan  Edwards  or  Nathanael  Emmons  after 
him,  he  believed  business  cares  incompatible  with  the 
ministerial  office,  and  so  absurdly  divorced  himself 
from  all  concerns  in  his  own  property,  that  he  did  not 
even  know  his  own  cattle  as  they  stood  before  his 
study  window.2  Fortunately  for  him  his  wife  was 
competent  to  supply  his  deficiencies  in  household 
economics. 

But,  however  indifferent  to  his  own  pecuniary  wel- 
fare, as  a  pastor  Eliot  gave  himself  unsparingly  to  his 
people.  His  long  ministry  was  not  unaided.  From 
his  settlement  in  1632  to  1641,  Thomas  Welde  was  his 
associate,  and  indeed  his  superior  in  public  repute,  as 
was  natural  for  one  older  in  years  and  in  ministerial  ex- 
perience. From  1649,  till  death  removed  him  in  1674, 
Samuel  Danforth  was  Eliot's  younger  colleague;  and 
in  1688,  near  the  close  of  Eliot's  long  life,  Nehemiah 
Walter  was  installed  by  his  side;  but  the  enumeration 
of  these  bare  names  and  dates  shows  how  large  a  por- 
tion of  pastoral  labor  came  to  Eliot's  constant  share. 
Whatever  honor  is  his  as  a  missionary,  it  should  not 

1  Magnolia,  i.,  p.  529.  *  Ibid,,  i.,  p.  5380 


144  JOHN  ELIOT 

be  forgotten  that  he  was  always  a  pastor,  and  that  the 
great  toils  which  his  missionary  service  brought  him 
were  in  addition  to  the  strenuous  duties  of  a  parish. 
No  man  could  have  endured  such  labors  had  he  not 
been  blessed,  as  was  Eliot,  with  good  health,  and  that 
basis  of  good  health,  a  cheerful  disposition.1  The  ex- 
pressions of  this  temperament  which  have  been  re- 
corded sound  a  good  deal  like  cant  to  our  time,  when 
direct  religious  allusions  fall  so  seldom  from  our  reluc- 
tant lips;  but  they  did  not  sound  so  then,  nor  did  they 
so  impress  the  men  of  early  New  England.  On  the 
contrary,  they  admired  his  "  singular  skill  of  raising 
some  holy  observation  out  of  whatever  matter  of  dis- 
course lay  before  him."  2  Thus,  as  he  climbed  wearily 
up  the  hill  to  his  meeting-house,  Cotton  Mather  records 
that  he  said  to  the  man  on  whose  arm  he  leaned : 3 
'  This  is  very  like  the  way  to  heaven,  't  is  uphill," 
and  glancing  at  a  bush  by  the  wayside,  he  instantly 
added,  *'  and  truly  there  are  thorns  and  briars  in  the 
way,  too."  The  same  capacity  to  draw  a  lesson  from 
every-day  occupations  is  shown  in  his  remark  to  a  man 
of  business  whose  account  books  he  saw  on  the  table, 
while  the  religious  books  were  in  a  case  against  the 
wall:4  "  Sir,  here  is  earth  on  the  table,  and  heaven  on 
the  shelf;  let  not  earth  by  any  means  thrust  heaven  out 
of  your  mind."  But  perhaps  Eliot's  constant  sweet- 
ness and  kindliness  of  temper,  as  well  as  his  transparent 

\Magnalia,  i.,  p.  532.     2  Ibid.      *  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  533.      *  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  534. 


JOHN  ELIOT  145 

fidelity  to  fact,  most  appears  in  his  elaborately  kept 
church  records,  from  which  I  quote  but  a  single  entry, 
illustrative  of  the  spirit  of  many  others.  Eliot  is  not- 
ing the  death  of  a  member  of  his  Roxbury  parish : l 

"  William  Chandler  he  came  to  N.  E.  aboute  the  yeare 
1637  ...  he  lived  a  very  religious  &  Godly  life  among 
us,  &  fell  into  a  consumption,  to  wh  he  had  bene  long  in- 
clined, he  lay  neare  a  yeare  sick,  in  all  wh  time,  his  faith, 
patiens,  &  Godlynesse  &  contentation  so  shined,  y*  Christ 
was  much  gloryfied  in  him,  he  was  a  man  of  weak  pts,  but 
excellent  fath  &  holyness,  he  was  a  very  thankfull  man,  & 
much  magnified  Gods  goodnesse,  he  was  pore,  but  God  so 
opened  the  hearts  of  his  naybe  to  him,  y*  he  never  wanted 
y*  wh  was  (at  least  in  his  esteeme)  very  plentifull  &  com- 
fortable to  him;  he  dyed  ...  in  the  yeare  1641,  & 
left  a  sweet  memory  &  savor  behind  him." 

The  man  who  penned  such  records  as  these  cannot 
have  been  other  than  a  good  pastor,  nor  can  anyone 
doubt  what  interests  he  placed  first. 

Eliot's  charity  to  the  poorer  members  of  his  flock 
was  unfailing,  and  far  out  of  proportion  to  his  means 
as  charity  is  ordinarily  bestowed  even  by  the  generous. 
The  story  is  told  that  one  of  the  officers  of  the  Rox- 
bury church,  knowing  Eliot's  freedom  in  gifts,  on  one 
occasion  tied  up  the  portion  of  his  salary  paid  to  him 
firmly  in  a  handkerchief  lest  the  pastor  should  part 
with  any  of  it  before  reaching  home.  On  his  home- 
ward way  Eliot  visited  a  family  in  distress,  and  as  the 

1  Roxbury  Church  Records,  p.  83. 


146  JOHN  ELIOT 

pastoral  call  lengthened  his  eagerness  to  aid  increased, 
till,  fumbling  in  vain  at  the  knots  that  he  could  not 
loosen,  he  at  last  handed  the  handkerchief  and  all  its 
contents  to  the  mother  of  the  household  with  the 
exclamation:  "There,  there,  take  it  all.  The  Lord 
evidently  meant  it  all  for  you."  1 

Eliot's  public  prayers  had  a  directness  almost  as 
marked  as  those  of  President  Finney.  When  Captain 
William  Foster  of  Charlesto\vn  and  his  son  Isaac,  later 
pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  Hartford,  were  captured 
by  the  Mohammedans  on  a  voyage  in  1671,  and  it  be- 
came known  to  their  friends  that  the  ruler  of  the  terri- 
tory where  the  Fosters  were  slaves  —  probably  some 
part  of  Algiers  —  had  declared  that  he  would  never  let 
his  captives  go,  Eliot  prayed  : 2 

"  Heavenly  Father,  work  for  the  redemption  of  thy  poor 
servant  Foster;  and  if  the  prince  which  detains  him  will 
not,  as  they  say,  dismiss  him  as  long  as  himself  lives.  Lord, 
we  pray  thee  to  kill  that  cruel  prince;  kill  him,  and  glorify 
thy  self  upon  him." 

And  this  prayer  his  congregation  believed  they  saw  an- 
swered in  the  speedy  death  of  the  piratical  ruler  and 
the  release  of  the  captives.  So,  too,  Eliot  spoke  out 
freely  in  prayer  that  love  of  schools  which  made  Rox- 
bury  eminent,  under  his  care,  for  its  excellent  instruc- 
tion. At  the  Reforming  Synod  of  1679,  he  uttered 
the  petition : 

1  i  Coll.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,  x.,  p.  186. 

2  For  these  illustrations,  see  Magnalia,  i.,  pp.  544,  551. 


JOHN  ELIOT  147 

"  Lord,  for  schools  everywhere  among  us!  That  our 
schools  may  flourish  !  That  every  member  of  this  assembly 
may  go  home,  and  procure  a  good  school  to  be  encouraged 
in  the  town  where  he  lives!  That  before  we  die,  we  may 
be  so  happy  as  to  see  a  good  school  encouraged  in  every 
plantation  of  the  country." 

No  picture  of  Eliot  would  be  true  that  did  not  recog- 
nize another  trait,  at  least  of  his  old  age;  —  he  made 
the  impression  of  being  an  old-fashioned  man.  I  sup- 
pose every  age  has  looked  back  on  its  predecessor, 
sometimes  with  truth,  as  a  time  of  simpler  faith  and 
more  strenuous  habits.  It  does,  indeed,  seem  odd 
enough  to  the  eye  of  the  modern  reader,  to  see  the 
page  which  Governor  Bradford  wrote  in  the  rude  set- 
tlement of  Plymouth,  half-wrested  from  the  wilderness, 
where,  after  describing  the  plain  garb  of  one  of  the 
Congregational  confessors  of  his  early  youth,  he  asks,1 
'  What  would  such  professors,  if  they  were  now 
living,  say  to  the  excesses  of  our  times  ?  "  The  ques- 
tion is  wellnigh  as  old  as  humanity.  But,  undoubt- 
edly, Eliot  seemed  to  the  men  of  the  third  generation 
on  New  England  soil  kin  to  a  simpler,  as  he  certainly 
was  to  a  more  heroic,  age.  His  great  moderation  at 
the  table  was  noticeable  even  in  those  days  of  plain 
living;  his  strict  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  and  his 
careful  preparation  for  it,  were  remarked  as  unusual 
even  in  that  age  of  Puritan  strenuousness ; 3  and  Cotton 

1  Dialogue,  in  Young,  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims,  p.  447. 
8  Magnalia,  i.,  pp.  535,  538. 


148  JOHN  ELIOT 

Mather,  whose  full  wig  showed  his  conformity  to  the 
supposedly  becoming  fashions  of  his  age,  records  that 
such  was  Eliot's  preference  for  the  natural  and  unsup- 
plemented  covering  of  the  head,  which  the  Puritan 
custom  of  the  Roxbury  teacher's  youth  had  preferred, 
that  "  he  would  express  himself  continually  with  a 
boiling  zeal  "  at  sight  of  examples  of  what  he  deemed 
a  heaven-provoking  excess.1  But  Eliot  was  no  intol- 
erant bigot;  on  the  contrary,  few  in  New  England  at 
that  day  would  have  shown  the  charity  that  he  did,  in 
1650,  in  inviting  a  visiting  French  Jesuit  missionary, 
Gabriel  Druillettes,  to  spend  the  winter  as  an  inmate 
of  his  house.2 

Eliot's  interest  in  public  and  ecclesiastical  concerns 
was  always  marked.  His  share  in  the  preparation  of 
the  Bay  Psalm  Book  of  1640  has  already  been  pointed 
out  in  treating  of  Richard  Mather.  But  regarding  his 
more  ambitious  attempts  to  suggest  an  improved  or- 
ganization of  political  and  religious  society  it  is  no 
dishonor  to  his  memory  to  suggest  that  an  undue  in- 
sistence on  the  permanent  and  binding  authority  of  the 
institutions  of  the  Jewish  state,  and  a  want  of  any 
considerable  degree  of  statesman-like  insight  into  the 
conditions  of  the  political  life  in  which  his  lot  was  cast, 
rendered  his  speculations  more  curious  than  valuable. 
This  is  conspicuously  true  of  his  tract  on  government, 

1  Magnalia,  i. ,  p.  540. 

9  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  ii.,  p.  308,     See  ante  p.  41. 


JOHN  ELIOT  149 

published,  in  1659,'  at  London,  under  the  title  of  The 
Christian  Commonwealth,  though  written  seven  or  eight 
years  earlier.9  In  this  essay  he  lays  down  the  basal 
principle '  that 

"the  Lord  Jesus  will  bring  down  all  people,  to  be  ruled 
by  the  Institutions,  Laws,  and  Directions  of  the  Word  of 
God,  not  only  in  Church  Government  and  Administrations 
but  also  in  the  Government  and  Administration  of  all 
affairs  in  the  Commonwealth." 

The  organic  rule  for  the  appointment  of  civil  officers 
he  finds  in  Exodus  xviii.  25  ;  and  from  that  passage  he 
deduces  the  principle  that  rulers  of  tens,  of  fifties,  of 
hundreds,  of  thousands,  of  ten  thousands,  of  fifty 
thousands,  and  so  on  should  be  appointed,  each  with 
judicial  and  administrative  authority  over  his  subdi- 
vision ;  and  that  each,  together  with  the  officers  of  the 
next  grade  immediately  under  him,  should  constitute 
a  court  of  justice  —  the  lowest  court  being  that  of  the 
ruler  of  tens,  the  next  higher  being  that  of  the  ruler  of 
fifties,  together  with  the  five  rulers  of  tens  included  in 
his  fifty,  and  so  on  till  over  all  the  "  Chief  Ruler," 
chosen  by  the  people,  and  assisted  by  his  "  Supreme 
Council,"  was  reached.  Of  this  reconstructed  state 
the  Bible  was  to  be  the  sole  statute  book.  The  plan 

1  J.  H.  Trumbull,  Brinley  Sale  Catalogue,  No.  570. 
s  See  Records  of    .     .     .     Mass.,  iv.,  part  ii.,  6.     The  whole  tract  is 
reprinted  in  3  Coll.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,  ix.,  pp.  127-164. 
3  Christian  Commonwealth,  Preface. 


150  JOHN  ELIOT 

was  fantastic  enough  as  applied  to  a  country  of  com- 
plex social  organization  and  ancient  political  traditions 
like  England,  though  Eliot  carried  it  out  as  far  as  pos- 
sible in  the  regulation  of  the  political  affairs  of  his 
Indian  converts.  But  the  Massachusetts  government, 
anxious  for  its  own  liberties  which  were  imperilled  by 
the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  condemned  the  book  in 
May,  1661,  and  ordered  its  suppression  "as  justly  offen- 
cive  .  .  .  to  kingly  government  in  England."  *  Eliot 
expressed  his  disavowal  of  certain  expressions  in  the 
book  that  seemed  to  reflect  on  the  restored  monarchy  in 
a  manly  letter,2  which  speaks  the  tone  of  sincerity. 

But  though  Eliot  might  renounce  the  full  application 
of  his  theories  to  civil  affairs,  he  was  much  enamored 
of  his  plan  of  subdivisions  and  graded  courts  therein 
outlined,  so  that,  in  1665,  he  printed  his  Communion 
of  Churches,  in  which  he  carried  very  similar  principles 
over  to  the  realm  of  ecclesiastical  affairs.  Perhaps  his 
experiences  with  the  Massachusetts  legislature  already 
narrated  inclined  Eliot  now  to  caution,  for  the  volume 
was  not  published,  and  is  accounted  the  first  "  pri- 
vately printed  American  book."  In  this  tract  Eliot 
proposed  that  every  twelve  churches  should  unite  in  a 
"  first  council,"  composed  of  pastors  and  delegates, 
and  meeting  once  a  month  at  least;  twelve  "  first 
councils  "  should,  in  turn,  send  a  chosen  pastor  and  a 

1  Records  of    .      .     .     Mass.,  iv.,  part  ii.,  p.  5.  2  Ibid.f  p.  6. 

8  J.  H.  Trumbull,  in  Brinley  Sale  Catalogue,  No.  760. 


JOHN  ELIOT  151 

delegate  to  a  quarterly  "  provincial  council  "  ;  twelve 
provincial  councils  "  should  in  the  same  way  send 
representatives  to  a  yearly  "  national  council,"  and 
twelve  "  national  councils"  might  be  represented  in 
the  same  fashion  in  an  "  oecumenical  council,"  the  de- 
liberations of  which  might  be  conducted  in  Hebrew.1 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  this  fanciful  outline  of  church 
polity  found  as  scanty  acceptance  as  Eliot's  proposed 
reconstitution  of  civil  government.  He  could  not 
have  done  the  work  of  Thomas  Hooker  or  of  John 
Cotton. 

Eliot's  fame  rests  on  none  of  the  publications  just 
described,  but  primarily  on  his  labors  as  a  missionary, 
though  as  a  pastor  he  would  well  have  deserved  com- 
memoration had  he  never  preached  to  the  Indians. 
The  thought  of  labor  for  the  Indians  of  the  New 
World  did  not  originate  with  Eliot.  To  say  nothing 
of  the  missionary  efforts  of  the  Spaniards  to  which 
all  America  from  California  southward  bears  witness 
to  this  day,  or  of  that  bright  page  of  heroism  and  sac- 
rifice which  French  Jesuits  wrote  as  the  chief  glory  of 
the  early  history  of  Canada,  the  English  colonists, 
both  of  Pilgrim  and  of  Puritan  antecedents,  had  it  as 
one  of  their  main  aims  in  coming  to  America  to  carry 

1  I  have  taken  this  epitome  from  Dexter,  Cong,  as  Seen,  pp.  509,  510. 
Eliot  would  provide  for  fractions  by  counting  each  group  of  more  than 
twelve  and  less  than  twenty-four,  as  twelve  ;  a  device  that  had  already 
appeared  in  his  Christian  Commonwealth,  where,  for  instance,  a  "  ruler 
of  ten  "  may  rule  over  any  number  from  ten  to  nineteen. 


152  JOHN  ELIOT 

the  Gospel  to  the  native  inhabitants.  But  no  syste- 
matic plan  had  been  adopted  for  so  doing,  and  the 
task  of  founding  homes  in  the  new  country  proved  of 
such  difficulty  that  little  attention  could  be  given  at 
first  to  the  Christianization  of  the  Indians.  The  lan- 
guage, moreover,  was  a  formidable  barrier,  and  even 
more  the  dissimilarity  of  thought  between  a  civilized 
and  a  barbarous  race.  The  Indians  were  accessible 
with  difficulty  save  on  the  side  of  trade;  to  go  among 
them,  to  become  acquainted  with  them  in  any  sense 
that  would  render  an  Englishman  familiar  with  their 
thoughts,  and  permit  the  impartation  of  religious 
truth,  implied  days  and  nights  in  filthy  wigwams, 
loathsome  fare,  and  deprivations  not  merely  of  the 
comforts  but  of  the  decencies  of  life,  such  as  few,  how- 
ever willing  to  make  the  sacrifices  involved  in  setting 
up  a  home  in  the  new  land,  cared  to  undergo.  The 
Puritans  from  the  first  treated  the  Indians  with  con- 
sideration and  tried  to  protect  them  by  law.  In  spite 
of  the  short,  sharp  struggle  with  the  Pequots  in  1637, 
New  England  feeling  did  not  turn  strongly  upon  the 
Indians  as  a  race  to  be  guarded  against,  as  against  the 
wolf  and  the  lynx,  till  after  the  outbreak  of  Philip's 
War  in  1675.  But  the  two  peoples  were  apart,  mutu- 
ally misunderstanding  each  other,  and  finding  any 
terms  of  intercourse  difficult  save  those  on  the  level  of 
the  exchange  of  the  skins  of  the  beaver  and  the  otter, 
for  the  cloth,  the  knives,  the  kettles,  and  too  often  the 


JOHN  ELIOT  153 

muskets  and  the  rum,  of  newcomers  to  New  England 
soil. 

The  first  New  Englander  who  made  protracted  and 
successful  effort  to  master  the  language  of  the  Indians 
of  eastern  Massachusetts  was  that  eccentric,  opinion- 
ated, yet  in  many  ways  far-seeing  and  devotedly  Chris- 
tian man,  Roger  Williams.1  As  early  as  1632,  it  would 
appear  that  Williams  had  begun  to  acquire  an  Indian  vo- 
cabulary. On  this  task  he  labored  while  ministering  at 
Plymouth,  and  he  continued  the  work  after  his  removal 
to  Salem,  so  that  by  the  time  of  his  settlement  at  Provi- 
dence in  1636,  after  his  banishment  from  Massachu- 
setts, he  had  a  considerable  command  of  the  dialects 
of  the  tribes  of  the  region  —  a  linguistic  acquaintance 
which  proved  of  great  value  to  the  colonies,  as  a  whole, 
in  the  negotiations  consequent  upon  the  Pequot  war 
the  year  following.  The  fruit  of  these  studies  was  the 
publication,  in  1643,  of  Williams's  Key  into  the  Language 
of  America,  a  word  and  phrase  list,  principally  in  the 
Narragansett  dialect,  that  is  our  best  monument  of  the 
colloquial  speech  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  south- 
eastern New  England.  Williams's  purpose  in  all  this 
labor  was  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  Indians;  but 
though  he  preached  to  them,  as  he  tells  his  readers, 
many  hundred  times,  and  not  without  results,  he  did 
not  undertake  systematic  missionary  work  in  the  exec- 

1  See  the  Preface,  by  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  to  Williams's  Key  into 
the  Language  of  America,  in  Publ.  Narragansett  Club,  i. 


154  JOHN  ELIOT 

utive  and  organizing  spirit  that  the  situation  demanded 
for  any  permanent  success.1 

Now  it  was  just  this  patient,  persistent,  consecrated 
endeavor  that  Eliot  gave.  Just  what  circumstances 
induced  him  to  undertake  his  work  among  the  Indians 
it  is  hard  to  say.  The  time  was  not  blind  to  the  mis- 
sionary duty,  for  on  November  13,  1644,  the  Massa- 
chusetts legislature  had  directed  the  county  courts  to 
see  to  it  that  the  Indians  in  their  several  jurisdictions 
were  "  instructed  in  ye  knowledge  &  worship  of  God."  a 
Henry  Dunster,  the  first  president  of  Harvard,  had 
been  interested  in  efforts  for  the  Indians  certainly 
since  1641. 3  Some  instances  of  the  conversion  of  In- 
dians had  already  occurred  and  had  been  narrated  in 
New  Eng lands  First  Fruits,  published  in  1643.  But 
there  is  no  reason  to  question  Eliot's  own  belief,  what- 
ever earthly  causes  may  have  conduced  to  the  result, 
that  "  God  first  put  into  [his]  my  heart  a  compassion 
for  their  poor  souls  and  a  desire  to  teach  them  to  know 
Christ  and  to  bring  them  into  his  Kingdom."  *  His 
first  step  in  preparation  was  the  reception  into  his 
household  of  a  young  Indian  servant,  who  had  acquired 
some  knowledge  of  English,  that  by  his  aid  he  might 

1  In   1674  Daniel  Gookin  wrote  :   "  God  hath  not  yet  honored  him 
[Williams],  or  any  other  in  that  colony  [Rhode  Island]  that  I  can  hear 
of,  with  being  instrumental  to  convert  any  of  the  Indians." — Palfrey, 
Hist.  N.  E.,  ii.,  195,  196. 

2  Records  of    .     .      .     Mass.,  ii.,  p.  84. 

3  Lechford,  Plaine  Dealing,  pp.  152,  153. 

4  Quoted  by  A.  C,  Thompson,  Protestant  Missions,  p.  57. 


JOHN  ELIOT  155 

master  the  dialect  of  the  Massachusetts  tribe.1  By  this 
help  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Ten  Commandments 
were  translated ;  and  Eliot  was  ready  to  begin  his  mis- 
sionary work. 

His  first  attempt,  of  which  we  know  little,  appears 
to  have  been  discouraging.  About  the  middle  of  Sep- 
tember, 1646,  he  sought  out  some  Indians  under 
Chutchamaquin  in  Dorchester;  but  they  showed  little 
interest  in  his  message,  and  asked  him  questions  as  to 
the  cause  of  thunder,  the  nature  of  the  tides,  and  the 
source  of  the  wind,  instead  of  those  more  spiritual  in- 
terrogations which  he  hoped  to  awaken.2  But  Eliot 
was  not  discouraged  and  soon  repeated  his  missionary 
efforts  in  another  quarter;  this  time  with  success. 

An  account  of  those  beginnings,  probably  from  the 
pen  of  Rev.  Thomas  Shepard,  of  Cambridge,  was 
printed  in  London  in  1647, 8  and  though  very  familiar, 
is  of  such  interest  and  importance  that  I  shall  not  hesi- 
tate to  quote  freely  from  it. 

It  was  "  upon  October  28,  1646,"  the  narrative 
states,  that  "  four  of  us  "  went  to  Waaubon's  wigwam, 
at  Nonanturn,  in  the  northern  part  of  what  is  now 

1  Eliot,  Indian  Grammar,  p.  66. 

a  The  Day-Breaking,  p.  3  (see  following  note). 

3  The  story  of  this  first  missionary  undertaking  is  told  in  The  Day- 
Breaking,  if  not  the  Sun-Rising  of  the  Gospell  with  the  Indians  in  New- 
England,  London,  1647.  Dr.  J.  H.  Trumbull  ascribed  its  authorship 
to  Shepard,  Brinley  Sale  Cat.,  No.  445  ;  Palfrey  thought  the  author 
Rev.  John  Wilson  of  Boston,  Hist,  of  New  England,  ii.,  p.  191  ;  and 
it  has  been  attributed  to  Eliot  himself,  though  page  18  of  the  tract 
shows  that  this  is  incorrect. 


156  JOHN  ELIOT 

Newton,  and  V  found  many  .  .  .  Indians,  men, 
women,  children,  gathered  together,"  at  Waaubon's 
invitation.  In  their  hearing  Eliot,  or  one  of  his  com- 
panions, began  the  work  with  prayer,  "  which  now 
was  in  English,  being  not  so  farre  acquainted  with  the 
Indian  language  as  to  expresse  our  hearts  herein  before 
God."  Then  Eliot,  using  the  scarce  familiar  speech 
of  the  Massachusetts  aborigines,  preached  "  for  about 
an  houre  and  a  quarter  " — a  time  none  too  long  for  the 
contents  of  the  sermon  for  the  narrative  records  that 

"  he  ran  through  all  the  principall  matter  of  religion,  be- 
ginning first  with  a  repetition  of  the  ten  Commandments, 
and  a  briefe  explication  of  them,  then  shewing  the  curse 
and  dreadfull  wrath  of  God  against  all  those  who  brake 
them  .  .  .  and  then  preached  Jesus  Christ  to  them  the 
onely  meanes  of  recovery  from  sinne  and  wrath  and  eternall 
death,  and  what  Christ  was,  and  whither  he  was  now  gone, 
and  how  hee  will  one  day  come  againe  to  judge  the  world  in 
flaming  fire;  and  of  the  blessed  estate  of  all  those  that  by 
faith  beleeve  in  Christ  .  .  .  the  creation  and  fall  of 
man,  about  the  greatnesse  and  infinite  being  of  God,  .  .  . 
about  the  joyes  of  heaven,  and  the  terrours  and  horrours 
of  wicked  men  in  hell,  perswading  them  to  repentance  for 
severall  sins  which  they  live  in,  and  many  things  of  the  like 
nature;  not  medling  with  any  matters  more  difficult." 

Questions  being  asked  for  at  the  end  of  the  sermon, 
the  four  companions  felt  that  six  queries  that  were 
propounded  by  their  Indian  auditors  were  so  serious 
and  pertinent  as  to  indicate  some  special  directing 


JOHN  ELIOT  157 

influence  of  God.  The  first  inquiry  was  that  funda- 
mental question,  "How  may  wee  come  to  know  Jesus 
Christ  ?  "  To  which  Eliot  answered  that  such  know- 
ledge came  by  reading  or  hearing  the  Word  of  God,  by 
meditation,  and  by  prayer.  This  last-named  sugges- 
tion led  to  the  query,  "  Whether  Jesus  Christ  did 
understand,  or  God  did  understand,  Indian  prayers  "; 
to  which  Eliot  gave  the  only  answer  possible  to  a 
Christian,  that  "  Jesus  Christ  and  God  by  him  made 
all  things,  and  makes  all  men,  not  onely  English  but 
Indian  men,  and  if  hee  made  them  both  .  .  .  then 
hee  knew  all  that  was  within  man  and  came  from  man. 
If  hee  made  Indian  men,  then  he  knows  all 
Indian  prayers  also."  Next  came  that  query,  so  often 
asked  of  missionaries  the  world  over,  and  so  difficult 
to  answer:  "  Whether  English  men  were  ever  at  any 
time  so  ignorant  of  God  and  Jesus  Christ  as  them- 
selves ?  "  To  this  Eliot  replied  "  that  there  are  two 
sorts  of  English  men,  some  are  bad  and  naught  .  .  . 
and  in  a  manner  as  ignorant  of  Jesus  Christ  as  the 
Indians  now  are ;  but  there  are  a  second  sort  of  Eng- 
lish men,  who  though  for  a  time  they  lived  wickedly 
also  .  .  .  yet  repenting  of  their  sinnes,  and  seek- 
ing after  God  and  Jesus  Christ,  they  are  good  men 
now."  The  remaining  questions  had  to  do  with  the 
nature  of  idols,  the  possibility  of  the  acceptance  by 
God  of  the  good  son  of  a  bad  father,  and  the  peopling 
of  the  world  after  the  Deluge. 


158  JOHN  ELIOT 

I  have  entered  thus  fully  into  an  account  of  this  first 
meeting  because  it  shows  the  type  of  preaching  of 
these  missionaries.  Nor  was  it  without  speedy  results. 
On  November  28th,  after  a  third  meeting  had  been 
held  at  Waaubon's  wigwam,  some  of  his  dusky  hearers 
came  to  Eliot's  house,  confessing  their  sins,  and  offer- 
ing their  children  for  Christian  education,1  and  Waau- 
bon  himself  was  reported  to  have  begun  the  practice 
of  prayer. 

Eliot  did  not  confine  his  efforts  to  these  spiritual 
instructions  alone.  Like  more  modern  missionaries  in 
Central  Africa  or  the  Pacific  islands,  he  felt  that  civil- 
ization and  education  must  go  hand  in  hand  as  insep- 
arable companions  with  evangelization.  At  this  first 
meeting  the  Indians  had  asked  him  that  land  be  as- 
signed them  for  a  permanent  town.3  That  request, 
seconded  by  Thomas  Shepard  of  Cambridge  and  John 
Allin,  the  minister  at  Dedham,  who  were  probably 
two  of  Eliot's  three  companions  in  his  Nonantum 
visit,  the  Massachusetts  legislature  granted  about  a 
week  after  the  missionary  sermon  just  described,  the 
purpose  being  "  for  ye  incuragm*  of  yc  Indians  to  live 
in  an  orderly  way  amongst  us."  At  the  same  time 
the  Massachusetts  legislature  practically  became  the 
first  missionary  society  in  the  English  colonies,  direct- 
ing the  ministers  to  choose  two  of  their  number 

1  Day-Breaking,  pp.  19,  20. 

9 /#</.,  p.  7.  3  Records  of    ,     .     .     Mass.,  ii.,  p.  166. 


JOHN  ELIOT  159 

annually  to  labor  among  the  Indians,  and  promising 
assistance  in  the  work.1  Six  months  later — May,  1647 
— the  legislature  voted  Eliot  £10  "  in  respect  of  his 
greate  paines  &  charge  in  instructing  ye  Indians  in 
ye  knowledg  of  God."  2  So  generally  interested  were 
the  ministers  in  the  work  that,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
second  session  of  the  Cambridge  Synod  in  June,  1647, 
Eliot  preached  in  its  presence,  in  their  own  language, 
to  a  large  concourse  of  Indians.3  Contributions  began 
to  come  in  from  Puritan  sympathizers  in  England. 
One  donation  had,  indeed,  anticipated  Eliot's  work, 
that  of  Lady  Armine,  a  granddaughter  of  the  Earl  of 
Shrewsbury,  who  had  given  £20  a  year  as  early  as 
1644,  for  the  evangelization  of  the  Indians  —  a  sum 
which  the  Massachusetts  legislature  in  May,  1647, 
appropriated  to  Eliot's  enterprise.4 

So  strong  was  the  interest  excited  in  England  by  the 
printed  accounts  of  these  missionary  beginnings,  that, 
on  July  19,  1649,  less  than  six  months  after  the  execu- 
tion of  King  Charles  I.,  the  Long  Parliament  passed 
an  act  incorporating  the  first  English  foreign  mission- 
ary society,  under  the  name  of  the  "  President  and 
Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  New 

1  Records  of    .     .     .     Mass.,  ii.,  pp.  178,  179. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.,  p.  189. 

3  Winthrop,  ii.,  p.  376. 

4  See  Some  Correspondence  between  the  Governors  and  Treasurers  of 
the  New  England  Company,  etc.,  p.  ix.,  London,  1896  ;  also  Records  of 

.    .    .    Afass.,  ii.,  p.   189. 


l6o  JOHN  ELIOT 

England,"  with  power  to  hold  lands  to  the  yearly 
value  of  ^2000,  and  the  right  to  collect  money  through- 
out England  and  Wales.1  The  response  amounted  to 
the  then  unprecedented  sum  of  ;£  11,430,  and  the  Soci- 
ety which  thus  came  into  being  continues  to  the  present 
day,  though  its  principal  labors  since  the  war  of  Ameri- 
can independence  have  been  confined  to  Canada.  This 
Society  made  the  Commissioners  by  which  the  four 
Congregational  colonies  of  Plymouth,  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  and  New  Haven  were  represented  in  the 
loose  political  confederacy  in  which  they  had  been 
joined  since  1643,  its  direct  agents  in  superintending 
the  work.  By  1658  the  Society  was  spending  £520  a 
year  in  New  England,  of  which  Eliot  received  ^50,  as 
his  salary.2  That  year  the  Society  paid  £190  for  the 
education  of  nine  Indian  young  men  at  Roxbury  and 
Cambridge,  and,  besides  the  stipend  to  Eliot,  seven  in- 
habitants of  New  England  of  English  parentage  and 
seven  Indians  were  paid,  in  1658,  for  various  forms  of 
missionary  labor.3  All  this  activity  implied  wide  in- 
terest in  the  work  on  the  part  of  the  people  of  England 
and  of  New  England  alike;  but  it  was  not  without  its 
vigorous  opponents  in  both  lands,  as  useless,  result- 
less,  and  a  waste  of  money  needed  for  religious  effort 
at  home. 

1  See  History  of  the  New  England  Company,  etc.,  pp.  I,  2,  London, 
1871  ;  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  ii.,  pp.  197-199. 

2  Palfrey,  ii.,  pp.  332,  333. 

3  Ibid. 


JOHN  ELIOT  l6l 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that,  with  Eliot,  Chris- 
tianity, civilization,  and  learning  were  inseparably 
united,  and  that,  at  the  beginning  of  his  missionary 
endeavor  he  sought  to  gather  his  converts  into  a  town 
on  the  English  model.  But  Nonantum,  where  this  set- 
tlement was  first  made,  proved  unsuitable,  and  there- 
fore, in  July,  1650,  a  more  ambitious  village  was  begun 
at  Natick.  Here  houses  were  built,  chiefly  by  Indian 
labor,  gardens  and  orchards  planted,  and  a  combined 
schoolhouse  and  meeting-house  erected.  For  the 
government  of  the  little  community  the  Indians  were 
encouraged  to  choose,  in  1651,  rulers  of  tens,  of  fifties, 
and  a  ruler  of  a  hundred  ;  a  pattern  of  civil  government 
which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  Eliot  urged  upon 
England  a  little  later  as  that  prescribed  by  the  Scrip- 
tures. Here,  after  long  testing,  a  church  was  estab- 
lished, on  the  Congregational  model,  in  1660,  which 
numbered  fifty  Indian  members  by  1674,  and  to  which 
Eliot  preached,  while  his  health  permitted,  once  in 
two  weeks,  though  before  the  close  of  his  life,  it  came 
under  the  charge  of  a  native  Indian  pastor.1 

Eliot  felt  keenly  the  need  of  education  for  the  spirit- 
ual training  of  his  disciples,  and  there  is  no  more  self- 
denying  or  more  successful  endeavor  in  the  annals  of 
American  missionary  labor  than  that  he  made  to  give 
to  his  pupils  the  Word  of  God.  Save  for  the 

1  Afagnalia,  i.,  pp.  564-566  ;  Palfrey,  ii.,  pp.  336,  338,  iii.,  p.  141.    See 
also,  A  Late  and  Further  Manifestation,  pp.  1-6.     London,  1655. 


1 62  JOHN  ELIOT 

phrase-book  of  Roger  Williams,  the  Indian  dialects  of 
New  England  were  unwritten  ;  their  structure  was  pecu- 
liarly difficult  from  a  grammatical  point  of  view;  their 
literature  was  wholly  to  be  created.  That  one  who  was 
all  his  New  England  life  a  busy  pastor  of  an  English- 
speaking  congregation,  and,  also,  from  1646  onward, 
an  active  evangelist  among  the  Indians  not  only  at 
Nonantum  and  Natick  but  over  a  wide  stretch  of  the 
eastern  portion  of  Massachusetts,  should  find  time  also 
for  such  an  immense  labor  in  the  study  of  the  vocabu- 
lary, grammar,  and  idioms  of  the  Massachusetts  dialect, 
and  for  so  prolific  and  creditable  publication  of  trans- 
lations into  that  tongue,  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  mis- 
sionary accomplishment.  How  he  strengthened  himself 
for  such  toil,  he  expressed  in  one  of  his  volumes  in  a 
phrase  that  gives  the  key  to  his  industry  and  courage: 
"  Prayers  and  pains  through  faith  in  Christ  Jesus  will 
do  anything."  '  And  what  Eliot  accomplished  as  a 
translator  alone  constitutes  a  monument  of  which  any 
scholar  might  be  proud. 

His  first  work  in  the  Indian  language  was  a  Cate- 
chism which  he  published  in  i654.2  It  enjoys  the  dis- 
tinction of  being  the  first  volume  in  the  Indian  tongue  to 
be  printed  in  New  England  ;  though,  unhappily  for  the 
collector,  every  copy  has  disappeared.  But  the  volumes 

1  Magnalia,  i.,  562,  from  Eliot's  Indian  Grammar. 

2  Dexter,  Cong,  as  Seen,  Bibl.,  1661.     Was  it  the  Catechism  used  at 
Roxbury,  June  13,  1654,  and  printed  in  English  in  A  Late  and  Further 
Manifestation,  pp.  IT-2O? 


JOHN  ELIOT  163 

on  which  Eliot's  fame  as  a  translator  chiefly  rests  were 
his  New  Testament  of  1661,  and  his  complete  Bible  of 
1663.  I  can,  of  course,  express  no  personal  estimate 
of  the  qualities  of  this  version.  So  utterly  has  the 
Massachusetts  race  and  its  speech  perished  from  among 
men,  that  few  are  able  to  read  Eliot's  Bible ;  though 
probably  it  is  not  quite  true  to  say,  as  used  to  be  said 
during  the  lifetime  of  the  late  Dr.  J.  Hammond  Trum- 
bull,  that  only  he  could  do  so.  But  Dr.  Trumbull,1 
whose  competency  as  a  judge  no  one  will  criticise, 
affirmed  regarding  Eliot's  Bible  that  it  was 

"  a  marvellous  triumph  of  scholarship;  achieved  in  the  face 
of  difficulties  which  might  well  have  appeared  insurmount- 
able. It  may  be  doubted  if,  in  the  two  centuries  which 
have  elapsed  since  the  Indian  Bible  was  printed,  any  trans- 
lation of  the  sacred  volume  has  been  made  from  the  English 
to  a  foreign  tongue  of  more  literal  accuracy  and  complete- 
ness. If  a  different  impression  has  been  popularly  received, 
slight  study  of  the  Indian  text  will. suffice  to  remove  it." 

It  was  deemed  the  great  honor  of  William  Carey 
that  he  was  the  translator  of  the  Bible  into  the  lan- 
guages of  India;  can  we  give  Eliot  less  meed  of  praise  ? 

Eliot's  Indian  Bible  was  only  the  beginning  of  a 
series  of  translations  and  publications  in  the  Indian 
speech.  Bound  up  with  the  volume  was  a  translation 
of  the  Psalms  in  meter.  The  year  1664  saw  the 

1  Trumbull  in  Pub.  Narragansett  Club.,  i.,  pp.  6,  7  ;  see  also  regard- 
ing this  Indian  literature,  Trumbull's  chapter  in  Memorial  History  of 
Boston,  i.,  pp.  465  sqq. 


164  JOHN  ELIOT 

putting  forth  by  Eliot,  in  Indian  dress,  of  Baxter's  Call 
to  the  Unconverted ;  in  1665,  a  translation  of  Bishop 
Bayly's  Practice  of  Piety  was  issued;  in  1666  there  fol- 
lowed Eliot's  Indian  Grammar  Begun ;  and,  in  1669, 
his  Indian  Primer  ;  the  year  1680  saw  a  second  edi- 
tion of  the  New  Testament,  and  in  1685  of  the  whole 
Bible;  and,  finally,  in  1689,  Eliot  put  forth  a  transla- 
tion of  Shepard's  Sincere  Convert.  These  volumes 
were  printed  at  the  New  England  Cambridge,  and 
chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  at  the  expense  of  the  English 
Society,  which  thus  supplied  Christian  literature,  as 
well  as  tools  and  other  material  instruments  of  civiliza- 
tion to  the  Indian  converts.1  Of  course  this  literature 
demanded  instruction  in  reading;  and  therefore  Eliot 
made  the  schoolmaster  as  prominent  as  the  minister  in 
his  Indian  settlements. 

It  is  evident  that  a  movement  of  such  widespread 
interest  as  that  in  which  Eliot  was  a  leader  could  be 
confined  to  no  one  portion  of  New  England.  He  was 
indeed  the  foremost  always  in  leadership  and  service; 
but  many  others  were  associated  with  him,  or  entered 
independently  into  the  missionary  enterprise  moved 
by  the  secret  promptings  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  Of 
these  the  most  conspicuous,  perhaps,  were  the  two 
Thomas  Mayhews,  father  and  son,  of  Martha's  Vine- 
yard. There  the  work  had  begun,  almost  without 

1  For  an  example  of  some  expenditures  of  the  Society,  see  N.  E.  Hist, 
and  GeneaL  Register,  xxxvi.,  pp.  297-299. 


JOHN  ELIOT  165 

effort,  in  1643,  by  the  awakening  of  Hiacoomes,  one 
of  the  leading  Indians;  and  in  1646,  the  same  year 
that  Eliot  began  his  work  at  Nonantum,  the  younger 
Mayhew  commenced  systematic  efforts  for  the  Chris- 
tianization  of  his  Indian  neighbors.1  After  the  death 
of  this  missionary  the  undertaking  was  carried  on  by 
his  father,  and  in  turn  by  his  son,  grandson,  and  great- 
grandson,  till  the  demise  of  the  latter  in  1806,  making 
this  record  of  five  generations  the  longest  chain  of 
hereditary  endeavor  in  the  annals  of  missions.3  This 
labor  on  Martha's  Vineyard  and  Nantucket  was  re- 
markably successful.  By  1651  Mayhew  could  report 
one  hundred  and  ninety-nine  converts,  and  in  1670,  a 
church  was  formed  on  Martha's  Vineyard,3  that  was 
soon  followed  by  several  others  on  the  islands  of  this 
group.  In  all  this  work  the  same  English  Society 
that  aided  Eliot  lent  its  assistance  from  1651  onward. 
Other,  though  smaller  centers  of  activity  developed 
on  Cape  Cod,  at  Marshpee,  where  a  church  was  formed 
under  Richard  Bourne  about  i6/o,4  and  at  Eastham, 
where  Rev.  Samuel  Treat  long  labored  for  the  spiritual 
good  of  the  Indians.5  At  Plymouth,  the  pastor  of  the 
old  Pilgrim  church  from  1669  to  1697,  John  Cotton, 

1  See  Mayhew's  letter  in  A  Farther  Discovery  of  the  Present  State  of 
the  Indians,  pp.  3-13.      London,  1651. 

2  A.  C.  Thompson,  Protestant  Missions,  p.  87. 

3  Magnalia,  ii.,  p.  431. 

4  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  567. 

5  Sibley,  Graduates  of  Harvard,  ii.,  pp.  305-307. 


1 66  JOHN  ELIOT 

son  of  the  more  famous  John,  did  much  for  the  In- 
dians, and  helped  to  revise  Eliot's  Bible  for  its  second 
edition.1  Branford,  in  Connecticut  colony,  saw  some 
work  for  its  Indian  inhabitants  by  its  pastor,  Abraham 
Pierson,  father  of  the  first  president  of  Yale.2  Eliot's 
own  immediate  mission  grew,  so  that  by  1654  a  second 
town,  on  the  plan  of  Natick,  was  organized  at  Punka- 
pog,  now  known  as  Stoughton.3  And  he  had  the 
assistance  of  consecrated  and  self-denying  men,  like 
Daniel  Gookin,  whom  the  Massachusetts  government 
made,  from  1656  to  1687,  the  "  ruler"  or  superinten- 
dent of  its  Indian  subjects.4  Eliot  had  the  satis- 
faction, before  his  death,  of  seeing  that  his  work 
would  be  carried  on  by  those  in  the  New  England 
ministry  who  were  in  hearty  sympathy  with  it,  like 
Grindall  Rawson  of  Mendon,  and  Samuel  Danforth 
of  Taunton.5 

The  missionary  endeavor  was  crowned  with  unde- 
niable success.  In  spite  of  its  difficulties,  by  1674 
those  Indians  who  had  been  brought  in  some  measure 
under  the  influence  of  the  Gospel,  or  "  Praying  In- 
dians "  as  they  were  called,  numbered  four  thousand, 
of  whom  nearly  one  half  were  on  the  islands  of  the 

1  Sibley,  i.,  pp.  496-508  ;  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  568. 

2  Palfrey,  ii.,  p.  340. 

3  Late  and  Further  Manifestation  of  the  Progress  of  the  Gospel,  p.  2. 
London,  1655. 

4  Palfrey,  ii.,  p.  338. 

5  Sibley,  iii.,  pp.  163-168,  244-249. 


JOHN  ELIOT  167 

Martha's  Vineyard  group.1  About  eleven  hundred 
were  in  Eliot's  villages.  They  were  gathered  into  six 
churches,  numbering  in  all  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  members,  and  in  at  least  twenty  places  preaching 
and  schools  were  regularly  maintained,  chiefly  by  edu- 
cated Indians.  The  villages  of  the  "  Praying  Indians  " 
numbered  thirty-three.  But  the  stronger  tribes  of 
southern  New  England,  the  Narragansetts  and  Wam- 
panoags,  were  scarcely  touched  by  Christianity,  and 
probably  wholly  misunderstood  the  intentions  of  the 
missionaries.2  They  probably  conceived  the  purpose 
of  settlements  like  those  at  Natick  and  Marshpee  as  an 
attempt  to  render  more  formidable  the  white  man's 
tribe  by  the  familiar  Indian  method  of  the  adoption  of 
weaker  neighbors;  and  doubtless  the  fear  thus  excited 
in  these  stronger  Indian  confederations  had  something 
to  do  with  bringing  on  the  terrific  struggle  for  the 
possession  of  southeastern  New  England,  known  as 
Philip's  war.  That  awful  experience  of  murder,  fire, 
and  robbery  cost  New  England  six  hundred  men  in 
1675  and  1676  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  complete  or 
partial  destruction  of  more  than  forty  towns.  It  cost 
the  Indians  far  more,  and  permanently  removed  the 
Indian  menace  from  southern  New  England.  But  it 
was  a  staggering  blow  for  the  missionary  enterprise. 

1  Palfrey,  iii.,  pp.  141,  142  ;  see  Eliot's  report  for  1673  in  I  Coll.  Mass. 
Hist.  Soc.,  x.,  124.     The  churches  were  Natick,  Grafton  (Hassanamisitt), 
Marshpee,  Nantucket,  and  two  on  Martha's  Vineyard. 

2  See  Fiske,  Beginnings  of  New  England,  pp.  208-210, 


1 68  JOHN  ELIOT 

While  most  of  the  converts  remained  faithful  to  the 
English,  arid  some,  like  those  on  Martha's  Vineyard, 
were  even  trusted  to  guard  captives  of  their  own  race, 
many  of  those  who  had  come  merely  into  external 
connection  with  the  missionary  movement  went  back 
to  their  savage  companions,  and  some  even  of  the 
converts  vied  with  their  heathen  associates  in  the 
cruelties  which  they  inflicted  on  the  settlers.  Even 
those  of  Eliot's  disciples  who  remained  faithful,  as 
most  of  them  did,  were  regarded  with  such  suspicion 
that  they  were  compelled  to  leave  their  villages  and 
live  under  the  surveillance  of  the  colonial  authorities.1 
And  when  the  war  was  over  there  remained  a  bitter 
and  often  undiscriminating  feeling  of  resentment  that 
rose  against  every  Indian  as  a  natural  enemy.  Yet 
the  work  went  on.  Eliot,  Gookin,  Mayhew,  and  their 
associates  faltered  not;  and,  had  it  been  the  war  alone 
that  hindered,  Indian  missions  in  New  England  would 
have  suffered  only  a  temporary  check.  As  late  as 
1698,  more  than  twenty  years  after  the  war,  Rawson 
and  Danforth  could  report  seven  churches  of  Indians, 
and  twenty  stations  where  preaching  was  maintained 
and  schools  were  taught.  Before  Eliot  died  in  1690, 
twenty-four  Indians  had  been  ordained  to  the  Gospel 
ministry.  His  own  first  colony  of  Natick  was  under 
the  pastorate  of  a  devoted  convert,  Tackawompbait, 
who  served  the  spiritual  interests  of  the  community 

1  Palfrey,  iii.,  pp.  199-202,  220, 


JOHN  ELIOT  169 

till  death  came  in  1716;  and  some  traces  of  this  work 
of  Indian  evangelization,  especially  on  Cape  Cod  and 
Martha's  Vineyard,  continued  till  far  into  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

But  it  was  a  dying  race  for  which  Eliot  labored,  and 
even  the  Gospel  could  not  greatly  check  its  decline. 
Devoted  as  the  missionaries  were,  the  story  of  these 
Indian  churches  is  one  of  rapid  decay  —  a  decay  not 
owing  to  a  spiritual  exhaustion,  but.  to  the  fading  away 
of  the  Indian  race  itself.  From  Philip's  war  onward  it 
rapidly  dwindled,  its  decrease  being  well  illustrated  in 
the  story  of  Natick,  where  the  population  of  Eliot's 
time  diminished  to  one  hundred  and  sixty-six  in 
1749,  to  about  twenty  in  1797,  and  in  1855  to  one.1 
From  the  standpoint  of  permanency  it  must  be  con- 
fessed that  Eliot's  work  has  not  endured  the  test  of 
time;  but  its  failure  was  not  due  to  any  inherent  lack 
of  spiritual  power ;  and  I  suspect  that  the  historian,  two 
hundred  years  in  the  future,  who  writes  the  story  of  the 
missions  of  the  nineteenth  century,  will  have  much 
the  same  tale  to  narrate  of  that  success  of  the  Gospel  in 
the  islands  of  the  Pacific  in  which  our  fathers  saw  the 
hand  of  God  almost  visibly  displayed,  and  whose  real 
power  and  significance  no  passing  slurs  by  politicians 
anxious  to  assert  the  authority  of  a  stronger  race  can 
wholly  obscure.  Like  Eliot's,  it  is  a  work  for  a  dying 
race  ;  and  like  his,  its  only  permanent  record  will 

1  I  Coll.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,  x.,  p.  136  ;  Bacon,  Hist,  of  Natick,  p.  21. 


I/O  JOHN  ELIOT 

probably  be  in  that  book  of  those  whose  names  are 
written  in  heaven.  But  was  it  less  worth  doing?  Only 
he  who  values  a  soul  at  less  than  the  Master's  estimate 
can  answer  in  the  negative. 

Eliot's  life  was  long,  far  beyond  that  of  any  other 
conspicuous  in  the  founding  of  New  England.  Cotton 
died  at  sixty-seven  ;  Richard  Mather  at  seventy-three; 
Hooker  was  sixty-one;  Davenport  was  seventy-two. 
Eliot  had  nearly  reached  eighty-six  when  death  came 
on  May  20,  1690.  He  saw  the  passing  away  of  the 
generations  who  were  the  leaders  in  his  early  manhood 
and  the  companions  of  his  maturer  years  so  completely 
as  to  come  to  remark,  with  that  cheerful  humor  that 
never  deserted  him,  that  "  his  old  acquaintances  had 
been  gone  to  heaven  so  long  before  him  that  he  was 
afraid  they  would  think  he  was  gone  the  wrong  way 
because  he  stayed  so  long  behind."  But,  happily,  he 
did  not  see  the  fatal  decline  of  the  mission  work  in 
which  he  had  been  so  long  engaged.  He  "  was  shortly 
going  to  heaven  "  he  would  say  in  his  last  days;  "  he 
would  carry  a  deal  of  good  news  thither  with  him 
.  .  .  to  the  old  founders  of  New  England,  which  were 
now  in  glory."  l  And  the  taking  down  of  the  mortal 
house,  timber  by  timber,  so  trying  an  experience  often- 
times in  old  age,  was  for  him  a  kindly  process.  In- 
firmities crept  upon  him.  But,  as  late  as  1687,  he  was 
able  to  preach  to  the  Indians  perhaps  once  in  two 

^  i.,  p.  579. 


JOHN  ELIOT  171 

months;1  and  when  weakness  would  no  longer  permit 
even  this  labor,  his  strong  missionary  spirit  turned  to- 
ward some  effort  for  the  despised  negro  slaves, —  for 
Massachusetts  had  slavery  in  those  days, —  and  he 
gathered  those  of  his  vicinity  once  a  week  for  cate- 
chetical and  spiritual  instruction.8  As  the  sands  of 
the  glass  of  his  life  ran  out,  and  he  was  confined  to 
his  house,  so  that  even  this  endeavor  was  beyond  his 
powers,  he  took  the  blind  son  of  a  neighbor  into  his 
own  home,  as  Cotton  Mather  says,  "  with  some  inten- 
tions to  make  a  scholar  of  him."  It  is  a  fitting 
picture  that  the  worn-out  missionary  presents  to  us  in 
his  last  days,  seated  by  the  fireside  in  his  Roxbury 
home,  teaching  a  crippled  boy  to  repeat  by  heart  that 
Bible  which  he  had  long  before  translated  with  such 
diligent  fidelity  into  the  Indian  tongue.  And  we  may 
well  leave  him  there,  with  his  own  characteristic  re- 
mark to  those  who  asked  him  "  how  he  did  "  ?  "  My 
understanding  leaves  me,  my  memory  fails  me,  my 
utterance  fails  me;  but,  I  thank  God,  my  charity  holds 
out  still."4 

1  Letter  of  Increase  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  pp.  566,  567. 

2  Magnalia,  i.,  p.  576. 

*  Ibid.,  i.,  pp.  576,  577. 
.,  i.,  541. 


INCREASE  MATHER 


173 


V. 

INCREASE    MATHER 

THE  leaders  of  Congregationalism  whose  lives  and 
services  we  have  thus  far  considered  may  all 
be  said  to  have  belonged  to  the  generation  of  the 
founders.  They  were  called  away  from  their  work 
by  death  at  very  different  periods,  it  is  true.  Eliot 
survived  Cotton  —  to  take  the  extreme  illustrations 
which  are  afforded  by  the  four  men  at  whom  we  have 
glanced — by  more  than  thirty-seven  years.  Yet  all  four 
were  born  and  trained  in  England,  all  were  exiles  for 
beliefs  embraced  while  still  in  the  mother  country,  and 
all  were  pioneers  in  some  feature  or  other  of  New  Eng- 
land's origins.  All  of  them  felt,  in  their  various  ways, 
the  glow  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  work  in  which  they 
were  engaged ;  and  all  looked  back  with  fondness  of 
recollection  to  that  English  home  of  their  youth,  as  a 
land  in  whose  struggles  they  had  a  personal  and  a  per- 
manent interest. 

The  man  to  whose  career  we  shall  turn  our  atten- 
tion to-day  shared,  indeed,  many  of  these  traits  of 
the  founders;  but  he  was  unlike  them  in  much  also. 
Born  in  New  England,  educated  in  the  New  England 

175 


INCREASE  MATHER 

schools,  he  was  a  true  son  of  the  New  England  soil. 
And  strong  as  was  his  attachment  to  the  ways  of  the 
founders,  his  work  was  cast  in  a  more  provincial,  less 
heroic  age,  when  the  great  religious  impulse  which 
had  made  New  England  possible  had  largely  spent  its 
fever,  and  the  land  had  reached  the  rather  humdrum 
status  of  an  isolated  colonial  existence.  We  love  to 
study  the  genesis  of  countries  and  of  institutions;  and 
I  presume  most  of  us  turn  by  preference  to  the  begin- 
nings of  New  England  rather  than  to  what  we  deem 
the  more  prosaic  annals  of  its  second  and  third  genera- 
tions. Yet  so  conspicuously  was  the  subject  of  our 
present  lecture  the  leader  and  the  epitome  of  his  own 
age,  so  gifted  was  he  in  talents,  so  serviceable  was  he 
to  the  Congregational  churches,  and  so  fully  does  he 

(deserve  the  description,  "  the  greatest  of  the  native 
Puritans,"  '  that  few  men  in  New  England  history  are 
more  worthy  of  the  careful  attention  of  the  student  of 
Congregationalism  than  Increase  Mather. 

Increase  Mather  was  born  on  June  21,  1639,  in  that 
home  in  Dorchester  into  which  we  have  already  glanced 
in  considering  the  career  of  his  father,  Richard.  Popu- 
lar tradition  represents  Puritan  names  as  Biblical  or 
fantastically  religious  to  a  degree  not  true  of  them  in 
general.  If  one  looks  over  a  list  of  Puritan  emigrants 
or  a  catalogue  of  early  church  members,  one  finds  it 
made  up  chiefly,  in  reality,  of  the  Williams,  the  Johns, 

1  Wendell,  Cotton  Mather,  p.  287. 


INCREASE  MATHER  177 

the  Edwards,  the  Henrys,  the  Richards,  the  Thomases, 
in  which  Anglo-Saxon  parents  have  delighted  certainly 
since  the  Norman  conquest.  But  occasionally  you 
will  meet  an  odd  exception,  and  the  child  whose  story 
we  are  beginning  received  his  name,  we  are  told,  "  be- 
cause of  the  never-to-be-forgotten  Increase,  of  every 
sort,  wherewith  GOD  favored  the  Country,  about  the 
time  of  his  Nativity."  The  boy  whose  name  was 
thus  bestowed  was  the  youngest  of  six  children, —  all 
sons, —  five  of  whom  grew  to  maturity,  and  four  of 
whom  entered  the  ministry,  doing  service  of  much 
more  than  ordinary  conspicuity.  The  household  at- 
mosphere into  which  he  was  ushered,  that  subtle  en- 
vironment which  determines  for  so  many  of  us  what 
we  are  to  be,  made  the  path  of  scholarship  and  of 
Christian  service  easy  for  him.  His  father's  character 
and  studious  habits  we  have  already  considered;  and 
his  mother  had  no  lower  ideals  for. her  boy.  "Child," 
she  was  wont  to  say  to  him,  "  if  GOD  make  thee  a 
Good  Christian  and  a  Good  Scholar,  thou  hast  all  that 
ever  thy  Mother  Asked  for  thee."2  The  mother's 
desires  for  his  scholarship  were  early  fulfilled,  for,  at 
the  age  of  twelve,  the  son  entered  Harvard. 

The  college  of  which  he  became  a  member  was,  in- 
deed, already  an  honor  to  New  England;  but  it  was  a 

1  Cotton  Mather,  Parentator  :  Memoirs  of  Remarkables  in  the  Life 
and  the  Death  of    .     .     .     Increase  Mather,  p.  5.     Boston,  1724. 
9  Ibid.,  p.  3. 


178  INCREASE  MATHER 

tiny  plant  as  compared  with  what  it  has  since  become. 
Founded  by  the  Massachusetts  legislature  in  October, 
1636,  by  an  appropriation — £400 — not  now  adequate 
to  endow  a  first-class  scholarship,  and  encouraged  two 
years  later  by  the  gift  of  John  Harvard,  it  graduated 
its  first  class  in  1642.  It  was  a  monument  to  the  de- 
sire of  the  leaders  of  New  England  colonization  to 
perpetuate  a  learned  ministry,  and  no  portion  of  their 
work  is  more  remarkable  than  this  early  endeavor  to 
reproduce  the  educational  institutions  of  the  home 
land.  The  college  when  Increase  Mather  entered  was 
under  the  able  presidency  of  Henry  Dunster,  who  was 
compelled  to  resign  on  account  of  Baptist  opinions, 
when  the  young  student  was  half-way  through  his 
course,  and  was  succeeded  by  Charles  Chauncy,  under 
whom  Mather  graduated  in  1656.  Its  further  instruc- 
tion was  conducted  by  two  or  three  tutors  or  "fellows  " 
taken  from  its  recent  graduates.1  While  the  class  of 
1653  had  reached  the  high-water  mark  of  seventeen, 
only  one  graduated  in  1654,  two  in  1655,  and  eight  in 
Mather's  own  class  of  1656.  The  one  college  building 
was  already  in  a  "  ruinous  condition,"  and  the  presi- 
dent's salary  was  largely  in  arrears;  while  the  "  fel- 
lows" had  to  divide  £12  between  them  as  their 
compensation.2  Students  were  admitted,  as  has  al- 
ready been  noted,  when  "able  to  understand  Tully,  or 

1  Quincy,  History  of  Harvard  University,  i.,  p.  273. 

2  Information  of  1633,  Ibid.,\.,  p.  463. 


INCREASE  MATHER  179 

such  like  classical!  Latin  Author  ex  tempore,  and  make 
and  speake  true  Latine  in  Verse  and  Prose  .  .  . 
and  decline  perfectly  the  Paradigim's  of  Nounes  and 
Verbes  in  the  Greek  tongue."  '  Once  matriculated  in 
the  college  each  student  was  required  to  attend  prayers 
"  in  his  Tutors  chamber  "  at  seven  in  the  morning  and 
five  in  the  afternoon,  there  not  merely  to  worship,  but 
to  give  an  account  of  his  further  study  of  the  Scriptures 
twice  a  day  in  private.  Any  student  under  age  was 
liable  to  corporal  punishment  for  infractions  of  the 
college  discipline.  Monday  and  Tuesday  were  days 
of  lectures  and  discussions  in  Logic,  Physics,  Ethics, 
Politics,  Arithmetic,  Geometry,  and  Astronomy,  for  the 
various  classes.  Wednesday  was  devoted  to  Greek. 
Thursday  was  spent  on  Hebrew,  Chaldee,  and  Syriac. 
Friday  was  the  time  for  Declamations.  Saturday  was 
devoted  to  catechetical  and  expository  instruction  in 
Theology,  and  to  History  and  Botany.3  The  students 
boarded  in  commons,  and  so  simple  and  frugal  were  the 
habits  of  the  time  that  the  total  expense,  aside  from 
books  and  clothing,  of  the  entire  four  years  in  college 
of  those  who  graduated  between  1653  and  1659  was 
from  $100  to  $200.  Even  this  modest  sum  was  usually 
paid  in  corn,  malt,  wheat,  beef,  eggs,  cider,  sheep,  or 
some  other  commodity  of  the  home  farm  rather  than 


1  Sibley,  Graduates  of  Harvard,  i.,  p.  n. 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  11-14.  3 Proc.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,  p.  60.     1860. 


180  INCREASE  MATHER 

In  Mather's  case,  however,  his  residence  at  Harvard 
was  interrupted  by  ill-health,  and  probably  half  his 
college  course,  if  not  more,  was  pursued  in  the  house- 
hold and  under  the  instruction  of  that  ablest  dialectician 
among  the  early  New  England  ministers,  Rev.  John 
Norton,  at  first  at  Ipswich,  and  then  at  Boston,  where 
Norton  succeeded  Cotton  in  the  care  of  the  First 
Church.1  Here  at  Boston,  and  in  Norton's  home,  oc- 
curred, in  1654,  the  spiritual  turning-point  in  Increase 
Mather's  history.  That  experience  was  strenuous 
enough.  Illness  had  laid  its  hand  on  the  fifteen-year- 
old  boy,  and  turned  his  thoughts  Godward  ;  but  a  sense 
of  his  own  sinfulness  overcame  him.  He  prayed,  he 
fasted,  he  wrote  out  a  catalogue  of  his  particular 
offenses;  but  he  felt  no  peace  of  mind.  He  feared 
that  he  "  Was  Guilty  of  the  Unpardonable  Sin."  At 
length  in  his  distress  the  boy  made  use  of  the  absence 
of  his  fellow  pupils  from  Norton's  house  on  election 
day,  in  a  way  that  he  later  described  in  the  following 
words : 3 

"  I  took  this  Opportunity  of  a  Private  Chamber;  and 
shutting  the  Door,  I  spent  all  the  Day,  in  Pouring  out  my 
Complaints  unto  the  Lord.  Towards  the  Close  of  the 
Day,  being  full  of  Extremity  of  Anguish  in  my  Soul  because 
of  my  Sin,  it  was  put  into  my  Heart,  that  I  must  go  and 
throw  myself  down  at  the  Feet  of  my  Saviour,  and  see 

1  Parentator,  p.  6. 

a  Ibid.,  pp.  7-12  ;  Chandler  Robbins,  History  of  the  Second  Church 
.  .  .  Boston,  pp.  18-19. 


INCREASE  MATHER  l8l 

whether  He  would  Accept  of  me,  or  no;  .  .  .  So  I 
came  before  Him  with  those  Words  of  Esther,  If  I  Perish, 
I  Perish,  Yet,  (I  said)  Lord,  if  it  must  be  so,  I  am  resolved  to 
Perish  at  the  Feet  of  thy  Mercy.  It  is  true,  I  am  a  Dog,  and 
indeed  unworthy  of  so  much  as  a  Crumb  ;  I  have  been  a  great 
Sinner  ;  Yet  I  am  resolved,  I  will  not  Offend  any  more,  but 
be  Thine,  and  be  Thine  only,  and  be  Thine  forever.  And 
while  I  was  thus  Praying  and  Pleading,  those  Words  of 
CHRIST  were  darted  into  my  Mind,  Him  that  cometh  unto  me 
I  will  in  no  wise  Cast  out.  .  .  .  After  that  I  had  some 
Comfortable  Perswasion  that  my  Sins  were  Pardoned." 

But  the  poor  boy's  hard-won  peace  of  mind  was  soon 
shaken,  for  Norton  preached  a  sermon  in  which  he  ad- 
vanced the  view  often  inculcated  by  the  founders  of 
New  England,  and  notably  by  Thomas  Hooker,  "That 
a  man  might  Forsake  his  Sins,  and  have  been  in  some 
Sorrow  of  Heart  for  them,  and  yet  not  be  truly  Con- 
verted unto  GOD."  That  was  a  staggering  thought, 
and  it  was  not  till  he  had  heard  other  sermons,  from 
his  father  and  from  the  "  matchless "  Jonathan 
Mitchell,  that  comfort  came  to  him  at  last.  Nor  was 
there  anything  unusual  in  this  intensity  of  struggle, 
this  sense  of  guilt,  or  this  self-distrust  even  in  a  school- 
boy. We  have  already  observed  something  similar  in 
the  case  of  others  whose  story  we  have  considered. 
The  preaching  of  early  New  England  taught  it  as  the 
normal  mode  of  entrance  into  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
and  represented  not  merely  that  the  path  of  conversion 
was  difficult  and  open  to  but  few,  but  that  it  was 


1 82  INCREASE  MATHER 

surrounded  by  pitfalls  of  self-deception,  which  only 
the  most  rigid  scrutiny  of  the  motives  and  intents  of 
the  heart  could  guard  against. 

Graduation  came  in  1656,  and  on  his  eighteenth  birth- 
day, in  1657,  Mather  preached  his  first  sermon.1  But 
the  favor  shown  to  New  Englanders  by  Cromwell  made 
the  home  country  very  attractive  to  Harvard  graduates 
desirous  of  a  career.8  Many  had  gone  thither;  among 
them  Increase  Mather's  two  older  brothers,  Samuel, 
who  had  settled  over  an  important  congregation  in 
Dublin,  and  Nathanael,  who  had  obtained  a  living  at 
Barnstaple  in  Devonshire.  At  Samuel's  invitation, 
Increase  now  sailed  for  England,  on  July  3,  1657,  less 
than  two  weeks  after  the  delivery  of  his  first  sermon ; 
and,  on  reaching  Dublin,  entered  Trinity  College,  where 
he  graduated  Master  of  Arts  in  1658. s  H  is  decided  pul- 
pit gifts  brought  him  into  notice,  and  the  succeeding 
winter  was  spent  by  Mather  in  supplying  the  congrega- 
tion left  temporarily  vacant  at  Great  Torrington  by  the 
absence  of  its  pastor,  John  Howe,  on  chaplain's  duty  at 
the  court  of  Richard  Cromwell.  The  spring  of  1659  saw 
his  appointment,  at  less  than  twenty  years  of  age,  as 
garrison  chaplain  on  the  island  of  Guernsey,  a  post 
which  he  held  till  the  Restoration  made  it  untenable 
in  March,  1661.  The  young  preacher  was  popular. 

1  Parentator,  p.  15. 

2  See  letter  of  Nathanael  Mather,  March,  1651,  in  Sibley,  i.,  p.  157. 

3  Parentator,  pp.  15-17. 


INCREASE   MATHER  183 

He  was  urged  to  conform,  as  some  of  his  fellow 
graduates  of  Harvard  had  done.  A  living  of  £400,  at 
least  four-fold  any  salary  he  could  hope  for  in  New 
England,  was  offered  him ;  but  his  conscience  would 
not  allow  him  to  use  the  Prayer  Book,  and  on  June 
29,  1661,  he  left  England,  surprising  his  father  by  his 
unheralded  arrival  in  the  Dorchester  home  on  August 
3  ist,  and  his  father's  congregation  by  preaching  to 
them  the  next  morning.1  A  sermon  before  the  Second 
Church  in  Boston  a  week  later  was  followed  by  a  call 
to  its  charge;  but  the  young  minister's  deliberations 
were  distracted  by  invitations  from  eleven  other  con- 
gregations,3 and  by  the  strongly  cherished  hope  that 
the  political  situation  in  the  home  land  would  permit 
him  to  resume  his  ministry  there,  so  that  it  was  not 
till  May  27,  1664,  that  he  was  ordained,  by  his  father, 
Richard  Mather,  and  his  colleague,  Rev.  John  Mayo,  to 
the  teachership  of  the  Second,  or,  as  it  was  generally 
called,  the  North,  Church  in  Boston,  which  was  to  be 
his  post  of  influence  till  his  death,  fifty-nine  years  later. 
The  site  of  this  meeting-house,  now  North  Square,  is 
in  the  densely  populated  foreign  section  of  modern 
Boston,  where  Puritan  or  even  Anglo-Saxon  occupants 
of  ancient  days  have  scarcely  left  a  trace  behind ;  but 
under  Mather's  leadership,  it  was  then  the  most  largely 

1  Parentator,  pp.  17-23. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  23,  24  ;  Chandler  Robbins,  Hist,  of  the  Second  Church, 

pp.  21,  22. 


1 84  INCREASE  MATHER 

frequented  place  of  worship  in  the  little  colonial  sea- 
port. 

While  Increase  Mather  was  debating  this  call,  he 
had  his  first  experience  of  public  service  for  the 
churches,  being  sent  by  his  father's  church  at  Dor- 
chester as  a  delegate  to  the  Synod  of  1662,  where  the 
Half- Way  Covenant  was  approved,  as  has  already  been 
described  in  narrating  the  life  of  Richard  Mather.  It  will 
be  recalled  that  the  youthful  delegate  opposed  the  re- 
sult reached  by  the  majority,  and  defended  by  his  father ; 
but  on  the  point  at  issue  he  speedily  changed  his  mind, 
and,  certainly  from  1671  onward,  there  was  in  New 
England  no  more  devoted  champion  than  Increase 
Mather  of  the  rather  dubious  spiritual  expedient  for 
benefiting  the  young  which  the  Synod  had  approved 
and  he  had  originally  opposed.1 

It  was  in  this  time  of  waiting,  also,  on  March  6, 
1662,  that  Increase  Mather  married  his  stepsister, 
Mary,  daughter  of  John  Cotton,  whose  widow,  the 
mother  of  the  bride  of  twenty  years  of  age,  had  mar- 
ried his  father,  Richard  Mather.  She  bore  him  ten 
children;  and  when  death  took  her  from  him,  in  his 
old  age,  after  fifty-two  years  of  life  together,  he  mar- 
ried, in  1715,  the  widow  of  her  nephew,  the  third  to 
bear  the  name  of  John  Cotton  in  the  New  England 
ministry.3 

1  Though  Increase  Mather's  First  Principles  of  New  England  Concern- 
ing the  Subject  of  Baptism  was  printed  in  1675,  its  Preface  is  dated  1671. 
3  Sibley,  Graduates  of  Harvard,  i.,  p.  437. 


INCREASE  MATHER  185 

But,  though  settled  over  a  growing  church,  the 
early  years  of  his  ministry  were  a  trying  time  for  the 
young  teacher  and  his  household.  As  we  have  already 
seen  was  the  case  with  his  father,  serious  religious 
doubts,  even  to  the  extent  of  questioning  the  existence 
of  God,  assailed  him.  His  ill-paid  salary,  in  the  earlier 
years  of  his  ministry,  left  him  under  a  constant  burden 
of  anxiety  by  reason  of  debt.  '  I  could  be  Content 
to  be  Poor,  I  care  not  how  Poor,'"  he  wrote  in  his 
journal;  "  But  to  be  in  Debt,  to  the  Dishonour  of  the 
Gospel,  is  a  Wounding,  Killing  Thought  to  me ;  Yea, 
so  Grievous  as  that  if  it  be  not  Remedied,  in  a  little 
time  it  will  bring  me  with  Sorrow  to  my  Grave." 

But  as  time  went  on  his  spiritual  perplexities  van- 
ished, and  the  increase  of  his  congregation  under  his 
successful  ministry,  together  with  the  generosity  of  a 
few  friends,  at  length  placed  him  in  circumstances  of 
pecuniary  comfort.1 

As  a  pastor  Increase  Mather  was  most  laborious; 
though  we  should  probably  think  as  some  did  in  his 
own  day,  disproportionately  devoted  to  his  study  rather 
than  to  the  visitation  of  his  flock.  But  Mather  always 
believed  the  pulpit  the  seat  of  ministerial  power,  and 
he  made  most  elaborate  preparation  for  its  duties. 
His  son  Cotton  records,8  that  sixteen  hours  of  the 
twenty-four  were  usually  devoted  to  mental  labor. 

1  On  these  troubles,  see  Parentator,  pp.  26-36,  and  Chandler  Robbins, 
Second  Church,  pp.  29-31. 

2  Farentator,  p.  181. 


1 86  INCREASE  MATHER 

"  His  Daily  Course  was  This.  ...  In  the  Morning 
repairing  to  his  Study,  (where  his  Custom  was  to  sit  up  very 
late,  even  until  Midnight,  and  perhaps  after  it)  he  deliber- 
ately Read  a  Chapter,  and  made  a  Prayer,  and  then  plied 
what  of  Reading  and  Writing  he  had  before  him.  At  Nine 
a  Clock  he  came  down,  and  Read  a  Chapter  and  made  a 
Prayer,  with  his  Family.  He  then  returned  unto  the  Work 
of  the  Study.  Coming  down  to  Dinner,  he  quickly  went 
up  again,  and  begun  the  Afternoon  with  another  Prayer. 
Then  he  went  on  with  the  Work  of  the  Study  till  the  Eve- 
ning. Then  with  another  Prayer  he  went  again  unto  his 
Father;  after  which  he  did  more  at  the  Work  of  the  Study. 
At  Nine  a  Clock  he  came  down  to  his  Family- Sacrifices. 
Then  he  went  up  again  to  the  Work  of  the  Study  ;  which 
anon  he  Concluded  with  another  Prayer  j  and  so  betook 
himself  unto  his  Repose." 

It  makes  one  ache  with  sympathy  to  think  of  this 
Puritan  scholar,  toiling  over  his  plain  desk,  by  daylight 
or  by  the  dim  light  of  a  candle,  without  exercise,  and 
with  scanty  interruption  for  the  necessary  food,  the 
laborious  round  broken  only  by  his  frequent  and 
methodical  devotions.  No  wonder  that,  under  the 
special  strain  of  his  father's  death,  in  1669,  he  so  fell 
into  what  Cotton  Mather  calls  "  that  Comprehensive 
Mischief  which  they  call  The  Hypocondriac  Affection, 
that,"  for  a  time,  "  his  Recovery  to  any  Service,  was 
by  many  very  much  Despaired  of." 

But  perhaps  you  would  like  to  know  a  little  more  in 
detail  how  Increase  Mather  mapped  out  his  toilsome 

1  Parentator,  p.  68, 


INCREASE  MATHER  187 

week.  He  has  left  a  record  of  its  allotment  of  time.1 
On  Sundays  he  preached,  and  catechised  his  family. 
Monday  was  dedicated  to  the  study  of  his  coming  ser- 
mons, with  a  slight  break,  devoted  to  general  reading 
after  dinner.  Tuesday  saw  the  sermons  continued 
through  the  morning,  while  in  the  afternoon  he  sought 
"  to  Instruct  Personally  some  or  other";  Wednesday 
was  again  devoted  to  his  sermons  and  his  books;  a 
labor  which  was  resumed  the  next  morning;  though 
a  respite  came  on  Thursday  afternoon  by  the  necessity 
of  attending,  and  frequently  conducting,  the  Thursday 
lecture,  which  was  then  the  sole  midweek  service  of 
the  Boston  churches.  After  the  lecture  Mather  was 
accustomed  to  hold,  with  the  other  pastors  of  Boston 
and  vicinity,  what  would  now  be  called  a  ministers' 
meeting.  Friday  was  again  spent  on  the  sermons  and 
in  general  reading;  and  Saturday  was  largely  devoted 
to  memorizing  the  discourses  to  which  so  large  a  part 
of  the  week  had  been  dedicated,  for,  though  Mather 
wrote  out  all  that  he  preached  with  painstaking  minute- 
ness, he  left  his  manuscript  behind  him  when  he  went 
into  the  pulpit.  His  delivery  was  clear,  his  strong, 
sonorous  voice  was  used  with  deliberate  gravity,  and 
his  manner,  though  powerfully  impressive,  was  ex- 
tremely simple  and  non-oratorical.  In  the  pulpit  he 
was  deemed  a  master  always. 

It  would  be  natural  to  imagine,  from  what  I  have 

1  Quoted,  Parentator,  p.  38. 


1 88  INCREASE   MATHER 

just  said,  that  Increase  Mather  was  a  recluse,  persuasive 
in  the  pulpit,  perhaps,  but  dwelling  apart  from  men, 
shut  away  in  his  study  from  the  concerns  of  the  world 
about  it.  No  conclusion  could  be  more  mistaken. 
Certain  it  is  that  he  labored  with  almost  the  persistence 
of  a  bookworm  in  the  room  in  which  most  of  his  wak- 
ing hours  were  spent;  but  it  is  equally  undeniable  that 
no  man  in  the  New  England  ministry  of  his  day  had 
so  great  an  influence  over  his  professional  brethren, 
the  churches  that  they  served,  the  educational  interests 
that  they  held  dear,  or  the  political  fortunes  of  the 
commonwealth  as  Increase  Mather,  nor  could  all  his 
weeks  have  been  mapped  out  like  that  just  recorded. 
A  brief  consideration  of  four  or  five  of  the  most  strik- 
ing instances  of  this  activity  for  what  he  deemed  the 
general  good  will  illustrate  the  leadership  which  it 
was  possible  for  a  minister  to  attain  in  early  New 
England. 

Mather's  first  conspicuous  appearance  as  the  leader 
of  the  Massachusetts  churches  was  in  connection  with 
the  so-called  "  Reforming  Synod  "  of  1679  and  1680.' 
To  a  man  of  his  warm  spiritual  nature,  pastoral  zeal, 
and  conservative  devotion  to  the  ideals  of  early  New 
England,  the  spiritual  tendencies  of  the  age  in  which 
his  ministry  was  cast  were  distressing.  The  old  Puri- 
tan movement  had  largely  spent  its  force.  The 

1  A  more  minute  account  of  the  Reforming  Synod  and  its  work  is 
given  in  Walker,  Creeds  and  Platforms,  pp.  409-439. 


INCREASE  MATHER  189 

spiritual  life  of  the  second  New  England  generation 
was  distinctly  lower  in  vitality  than  that  of  its  fathers. 
Men  looked  back  on  the  years  of  colonial  beginnings 
with  their  fresh  enthusiasms,  their  self-sacrifice  and 
their  spiritual  power  as  a  golden  age  of  better  things, 
and  not  wholly  without  reason.  The  decline  was 
undeniable.  Preaching  in  1668,  for  instance,  William 
Stoughton,1  later  Lieutenant-Governor,  exclaimed  in 
his  election  sermon : 

"  O  what  a  sad  Metamorphosis  hath  there  of  later  years 
passed  upon  us  in  these  Churches  and  Plantations.  The 
first  generation  have  been  ripened  time  after  time,  and  most 
of  them  geathred  in  as  shocks  of  corn  in  their  season. 
.  .  .  Whilest  they  lived  their  Piety  and  Zeal,  their  Light 
and  Life,  their  Counsels  and  Authority,  their  Examples  and 
Awe  kept  us  right  .  .  .  but  now  that  they  are  dead 
and  gone,  Ah  how  doth  the  unsoundness,  the  rottenness 
and  hypocrisie  of  too  many  amongst  us  make  it  self  known. ' ' 

Ten  years  later  Increase  Mather  told  his  Boston 
congregation  :3 

"  Prayer  is  needful  on  this  Account,  in  that  Conversions 
are  becoming  rare  in  this  Age  of  the  World.  They  that 
have  their  thoughts  exercised  in  discerning  things  of  this 
Nature  have  had  sad  apprehensions  with  reference  to  this 
Matter;  that  the  Work  of  Conversion  hath  been  at  a  great 
Stand  in  the  World." 

Nor   was   it   only  the  decay   of   active   piety  that 

1  New  Englands  True  Interest ;  Not  to  Lie,  etc.     Cambridge,  1670. 

2  Pray  for  the  Rising  Generation,  etc.     Cambridge,  1678. 


190  INCREASE  MATHER 

caused  concern.  The  rough  contact  with  the  wilder- 
ness lowered  the  tone  of  the  sons  and  daughters  of 
the  emigrants;  the  passion  for  land  led  the  settlers  to 
spread  themselves  over  the  country  in  a  way  that 
made  education  and  the  maintenance  of  religious  insti- 
tutions difficult  problems.  And  the  eighth  decade  of 
the  seventeenth  century  was  marked  by  losses  and  dis- 
tresses heretofore  unexampled  in  colonial  history.  In 
1675  and  1676  the  struggle  known  as  Philip's  war, 
which  we  have  noted  already  in  treating  of  Eliot's 
missionary  activities,  took  its  ghastly  toll  of  property 
and  life;  in  November,  1676,  just  after  this  struggle, 
Boston  had  its  first  great  fire,  Mather's  own  church 
and  dwelling,  together  with  the  section  of  the  town 
adjacent,  being  destroyed.  This  calamitous  loss  was 
followed  by  an  even  more  disastrous  fire  in  the  busi- 
ness portion  of  the  chief  colonial  seaport  three  years 
later.  Epidemics  of  smallpox,  failure  of  crops,  and 
shipwrecks  added  to  the  general  sense  of  calamity, 
and,  as  the  Puritan  divines  interpreted  these  things, 
of  divine  displeasure.1 

Under  these  circumstances  Increase  Mather  per- 
suaded eighteen  of  his  ministerial  associates,  doubtless 
those  assembled  at  the  annual  convention  then  held 
at  the  time  of  the  election,  to  unite  with  him  in  a  pe- 
tition to  the  Massachusetts  legislature  for  a  Synod. 

1  See  Preface  to  Increase  Mather's  Returning  unto  God  .  .  .  A 
Sermon,  etc.,  Boston,  1680;  and  Magnalia,  ii.,  p.  316. 


INCREASE  MATHER  Igl 

The  prayer  was  granted,  the  summons  issued/  and  on 
September  10,  1679,  the  body  met  at  Boston.  Though 
not  the  moderator  at  this  session,  Increase  Mather  was 
the  life  of  the  assembly.  His  pen  formulated  the  con- 
clusions, and  when  those  results  were  presented  to  the 
legislature  and  by  it  commended  to  the  attention  of  the 
churches,  his  voice  preached  "  a  very  Potent  Sermon, 
on  the  Danger  of  not  being  Reformed  by  these  things."  2 
The  pamphlet  embodying  the  Synod's  conclusions, 
known  as  the  Necessity  of  Reformation,  is  a  most  inter- 
esting witness  to  the  religious  state  of  New  England, 
and  to  the  questions  which  then  awakened  pastoral 
solicitude.  Undoubtedly  the  picture  it  presents  is  too 
somber.  It  was  designed  to  awaken  and  alarm.  But 
enough  of  truth  remains  after  all  necessary  deductions 
are  made  to  make  one  query  whether,  indeed,  the 
former  days  were  better  than  these.  Besides  the  gen- 
eral complaints  of  the  "  decay  of  the  power  of  Godli- 
ness," pride,  contention,  intemperance,  profaneness, 
lack  of  public  spirit,  untruthfulness,  and  "  inordinate 
affection  to  the  world,"  the  catalogue  of  provocations 
to  divine  judgment  enumerates  certain  special  offenses, 
some  of  which,  as  charged  on  our  ancestors  of  those 
supposedly  stern  and  simple  days,  sound  rather 
strangely. 

"  Pride   in   respect   to   Apparel,"   the   Synod  through 

1  Records     .     .     .     of  Mass.,  v.,  p.  215. 

2  Parentator,  p.  85  ;  Records     .     .     .     of  Mass.,  v.,  p.  244. 


INCREASE  iMATHER 

Mather1  declared,  "  hath  greatly  abounded.  Servants,  and 
the  poorer  sort  of  People  are  notoriously  guilty  in  the  mat- 
ter, who  (too  generally)  goe  above  their  estates  and  degrees, 
thereby  transgressing  the  Laws  both  of  God  and  man. 
.  .  .  There  is  much  Sabbath-breaking.  .  .  .  Walking 
abroad,  and  Travelling  .  .  .  being  a  common  practice 
on  the  Sabbath  day,  which  is  contrary  unto  that  Rest  en- 
joyned  by  the  Commandment.  Yea,  some  that  attend 
their  particular  servile  callings  and  employments  after  the 
Sabbath  is  begun,  or  before  it  is  ended.  .  .  .  There  are 
many  Familyes  that  doe  not  pray  to  God  constantly  morning 
and  evening,  and  many  more  wherein  the  Scriptures  are  not 
daily  read.  .  .  .  Nay,  children  &  Servants  . 
are  not  kept  in  due  subjection;  their  Masters,  and  Parents 
especially,  being  sinfully  indulgent  towards  them." 

The  remedies  proposed,  in  order  that  God's  anger 
might  be  averted  from  the  suffering  land,  included  a 
general  "  Renewal  of  the  Covenant  "  in  the  churches, 
the  enforcement  of  discipline,  the  better  support  of 
schools,  a  more  efficient  regulation  of  the  liquor  traffic, 
and  "  a  full  supply  of  Officers  in  the  Churches,  accord- 
ing to  Christ's  Institution."  This  last-named  sug- 
gestion of  amendment  reminds  us  that,  by  1679,  the 
elaborate  and  supposedly  exclusively  Scriptural  officer- 
ing of  churches  with  pastor,  teacher,  ruling  elder  and 
deacons,  had  largely  given  place  to  the  more  eco- 
nomical service  of  a  single  paid  officer,  the  pastor,  and 
the  assistance  of  the  deacons.  In  a  few  churches 
teachers  and  ruling  elders  were  long  to  survive,  but  in 

1  Necessity  of  Reformation,  pp.  4-15. 


INCREASE  MATHER  193 

most  they  had  disappeared  already  when  this  Synod 
met. 

The  evils  against  which  the  Synod  labored  were  too 
deep-seated  to  be  cured  by  any  such  palliative  as  it 
had  to  offer,  though  undoubtedly  some  good  was  ac- 
complished. In  general,  the  same  state  of  religious 
decline  continued  till  after  Mather's  death.  But  one 
more  act  of  the  Reforming  Synod  must  be  noted,  in 
which,  as  in  the  work  already  described,  Mather  bore 
large  share.  The  Cambridge  Synod  had  approved  the 
doctrinal  portions  of  the  Westminster  Confession  in 
1648 ;  but  a  generation  had  passed  since  that  event  and 
though  no  doctrinal  discussion  had  intervened,  the 
Reforming  Synod,  at  its  first  session  in  1679,  appointed 
a  committee,  of  which  Mather  was  a  member,  to 
"  draw  up  a  Confession  of  faith,"  to  be  reported  at  a 
second  session  in  May,  I68O.1  Mather  and  one  other 
of  this  committee  had  been  in  England,  when,  in  1658, 
the  representatives  of  the  Congregational  churches  of 
that  land  had  adopted  a  slight  modification  of  the 
Westminster  standard,  known  from  their  place  of  as- 
sembly in  London  as  the  "  Savoy  Confession."  This 
creed,  with  one  or  two  trifling  emendations,  was  now 
adopted  by  the  ministers  and  delegates,  with  a  unan- 
imity and  an  absence  of  debate  which  reveal  clearly 
how  little  of  departure  from,  or  indeed  of  discussion 
of,  the  common  Calvinism  of  the  Puritan  founders  had 

1  See  Walker,  Creeds  and  Platforms,  p.  419. 


194  INCREASE  MATHER 

yet  developed  in  New  England.     Cotton  Mather  thus 
records  J  his  father's  share  in  its  approval : 

"  Though  there  were  many  Elder,  and  some  Famous, 
Persons  in  that  Venerable  Assembly,  yet  Mr.  Mather  was 
chosen  their  Moderator.  He  was  then  111,  under  the  Ap- 
proaches &  Beginnings  of  a  Fever ;  but  so  Intense  was  he 
on  the  Business  to  be  done,  that  he  forgot  his  Illness  ;  and 
he  kept  them  so  close  to  their  Business,  that  in  Two  Days 
they  dispatch'd  it:  and  he  also  Composed  the  Prceface  to 
the  Confession." 

So  came  into  being  the  creed  known  usually  as  the 
"Confession  of  1680,"  long  regarded  as  the  standard  of 
the  Massachusetts  churches,  though  never  imposed  on 
them  by  governmental  or  ecclesiastical  authority,  and 
so  venerated,  in  name  at  least,  that  it  is  referred  to 
as  one  of  the  standards  of  Congregational  belief  in  so 
comparatively  recent  a  symbol  as  the  "  Burial  Hill 
Declaration,"  adopted  by  the  National  Council  of 
these  churches  in  1865. 

Already  the  most  conspicuous  minister  in  New  Eng- 
land, it  was  but  natural  that  the  trustees  of  Harvard 
College  should  turn  to  Mather  when  the  presidency  of 
that  institution  became  vacant  by  the  death  of  Urian 
Oakes  in  1681.  He  declined  at  that  time.  But  when 
death  once  more  emptied  the  president's  chair,  he  ac- 
cepted the  post ;  though  continuing  his  Boston  pastor- 
ate, a  labor  which  was  made  lighter  by  the  settlement 
of  his  eldest  son,  Cotton  Mather,  the  same  year,  as 

1  Parentator,  p.  87  ;  see  also  Magnalia,  ii.,  p.  180. 


INCREASE   MATHER  195 

colleague  pastor  of  the  church  of  which  he  was  in  title 
"teacher  " — an  intimate  and  almost  fraternal  associa- 
tion that  was  to  last  for  more  than  thirty-eight  years, 
and  to  be  broken  only  by  death. 

The  college  of  which  Increase  Mather  thus  became 
president  was,  as  we  have  already  seen,  but  a  feeble 
plant,  and  his  aid,  though  granted  necessarily  for  but  a 
fragment  of  his  time,  seems  to  have  been  of  real  value. 
Undoubtedly  he  considered  his  services  to  the  college 
more  indispensable  than  they  were  judged  by  others; 
but  unquestionably,  also,  no  man  in  the  Massachusetts 
of  that  day  was  so  well  fitted  to  carry  the  institution 
safely  through  the  troublous  fifteen  years  during  which 
he  was  its  head.  The  actual  work  of  instruction  was 
largely  in  the  hands  of  the  tutors,  John  Leverett  and 
William  Brattle,1  with  whom,  as  we  shall  see  later, 
Mather  did  not  sympathize  theologically.  But  the 
credit  of  bringing  the  college  safely,  and  with  increas- 
ing classes,  through  the  crisis  which  deprived  the  insti- 
tution, as  well  as  the  colony,  of  its  charter,  and  left  it 
long  without  a  legal  basis,  as  well  as  of  securing  for 
it  the  important  gifts  of  Thomas  Hollis,  must  be 
ascribed  to  Increase  Mather.  And  the  influence  of 
this  position  on  the  churches  can  only  be  estimated 
when  we  remember  that  nearly  all  ministerial  candi- 
dates in  New  England  then  received  the  training  of 
the  one  New  England  college. 

1  Sibley,  Graduates  of  Harvard,  iii.,  p.  181. 


196  INCREASE   MATHER 

The  time  of  Mather's  accession  to  the  presidency  of 
Harvard  was,  indeed,  one  of  concern  for  Massachu- 
setts. The  charter  of  1629,  conferring  upon  it,  as  in- 
terpreted by  the  colonists,  nearly  the  powers  of  an 
independent  state,  had  long  been  looked  upon  with 
disfavor  by  the  Stuart  sovereigns;  and,  in  1683,  that 
opponent  of  the  colonial  liberties,  Edward  Randolph, 
had  a  writ  served  on  the  Massachusetts  government 
summoning  it  to  defend  its  charter  from  annulment  by 
the  English  courts.  Increase  Mather  vigorously  en- 
couraged resistance;  and  through  his  influence  the 
lower  house  of  the  legislature  and  the  Boston  town 
meeting  alike  strenuously  opposed  the  royal  demand. 
The  blow  fell,  nevertheless,  for  in  June,  1684,  the 
Court  of  Chancery  at  London  vacated  the  charter. 
All  Massachusetts  institutions,  the  legislature,  the 
courts,  the  college,  the  churches,  even  the  tenure  of 
private  property,  were  deprived  of  their  legal  basis  by 
this  decision;  and  with  the  reign  of  James  II.,  which 
began  in  February  of  the  next  year,  Massachusetts 
soon  chafed  under  the  rule  of  the  younger  Dudley 
and  of  Sir  Edmund  Andros,  and  trembled  with  appre- 
hension or  realization  at  the  abolition  of  personal, 
political,  and  property  rights  long  held  sacred. 

To  those  in  Massachusetts  who  looked  with  regret 
at  the  passing  away  of  the  old  order  it  seemed  that 
something  might  possibly  be  effected  by  a  personal 
appeal  to  James  II.,  whose  undisguised  Catholic 


INCREASE   MATHER  197 

sympathies  disposed  him  to  seek  the  support  of  all  other 
English  Non-conformists.1  No  man  in  the  colony  was 
so  fitted  for  such  a  mission  as  Increase  Mather,  by 
reason  of  his  conspicuity  in  the  pulpit,  his  political 
principles,  his  acquaintance  in  England,  where  he  had 
been  an  acceptable  preacher,  and  his  capacity  to  ap- 
pear to  advantage  at  court.  His  errand  was  sus- 
pected, and  Randolph  tried  his  best  to  arrest  him ; 
but  on  April  7,  1688,  after  more  than  a  week  of  hid- 
ing, he  got  safely  on  shipboard,2  and  twenty-nine  days 
later  landed  at  the  English  Weymouth.  Jarnes  re- 
ceived Mather  graciously,  though  he  granted  none  of 
his  requests;3  but  Mather  cultivated  the  friendship  of 
the  chief  of  the  Non-conformists  and  of  the  Whig  leaders 
with  such  diligence  that  when,  in  the  winter  of  1688- 
1689,  the  throne  of  England  passed  to  William  and 
Mary  he  was  in  a  position  to  present  the  case  of  the 
colonies  to  the  new  sovereigns.  It  needed  all  the  per- 
suasive arts  of  the  colonial  ambassador-in-chief,  for 
William  was  jealous  of  colonial  independence,  and  the 
two  associates  whom  the  Massachusetts  legislature 
had  sent  over  to  assist  Mather  complicated  his  efforts 

1  For  Mather's  mission  to  England,  see  The  Andros  Tracts,  ii. 
(Prince  Society),  Boston,  1869,  edited  by  W.  H.  Whitmore.  I  have  de- 
scribed this  incident  in  Papers  of  the  American  Society  of  Church  His- 
tory, v.,  pp.  72-77,  and  in  picturing  it  here  have  to  some  extent 
reproduced  the  language  in  which  I  have  there  told  the  story. 

'2  Sewall,  Diary,  v.  Coll.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,  v.,  pp.  209,  210. 

8  For  these  requests,  see  Hutchinson,  Hist.  Mass.  Bay,  pp.  367-369. 
London,  1765. 


198  INCREASE  MATHER 

by  staking  all  on  a  restoration  of  the  old  charter,  to 
which  the  King  would  not  agree.  So  Mather  fought  out 
the  battle  single-handed,  and  on  the  whole  very 
successfully.  The  charter  which  he  obtained  in  the 
summer  of  1691  was  not  all  that  he  desired.  It  gave 
to  the  King,  instead  of  to  the  colony,  the  right  to 
appoint  the  highest  officers  of  state ;  it  reserved  to  him 
a  right  to  reject  distasteful  laws;  it  allowed  appeals  to 
his  higher  English  courts,  and  it  granted  freedom  of 
worship  to  all  Protestants.  But  though  Mather  would 
gladly  have  had  these  provisions  other  than  they  were, 
the  new  charter  united  Plymouth  colony  to  Massachu- 
setts, thus  permanently  preventing  its  dreaded  annex- 
ation to  New  York;  it  left  the  legislature  under  the 
control  of  the  people;  reserved  to  it  the  public  purse; 
preserved  the  local  governments  of  the  towns;  and, 
by  comfirming  all  grants  heretofore  made  by  the  Gen- 
eral Court,  assured  to  individuals  and  the  churches  the 
possession  of  their  property,  and  largely  the  mainte- 
nance of  their  ancient  constitution. 

Though  Mather  could  not  escape  the  criticism  of 
those  who  wished  the  restoration  of  the  old  semi-in- 
dependent and  ecclesiastically  exclusive  government, 
many  of  whom  looked  upon  him  as  a  traitor  for  not 
securing  more  than  he  did,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
no  Massachusetts  man  of  that  age  could  have  obtained 
as  much.  It  is  not  extravagant  to  affirm  that  he  did 
more  than  any  other  man  of  his  generation  to  maintain 


•INCREASE  MATHER  199 

essentially  operative,  and  to  hand  down  to  his  succes- 
sors, the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  institutions  of  New 
England,  which  without  his  efforts  could  not  have  es- 
caped far  more  serious  modification  than  they  actually 
underwent  in  this  trying  time. 

Mather's  influence  in  this  negotiation,  and  the  im- 
pression of  leadership  among  the  citizens  of  Mas- 
sachusetts which  he  made  upon  the  English  authorities 
is  perhaps  best  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  royal 
government  left  the  crown  appointments  at  the  initia- 
tion of  the  new  provincial  administration  largely  to  his 
nomination.1  The  extent  to  which  he  used  this  influ- 
ence to  secure  office  for  his  friends  and  parishioners  was 
unwise,  and  was  the  source  of  much  later  hostility 
to  him.  And,  in  general,  it  may  be  said  that,  while 
Mather  did  a  work  for  Massachusetts  of  almost  ines- 
timable importance  in  this  troubled  time,  he  made 
more  enemies  than  he  could  possibly  have  aroused  in 
any  other  way,  and  the  jealousies  and  antagonisms 
now  engendered  embittered  his  later  life. 

Increase  Mather  was  not  a  man  to  forget  his  mission 
as  a  minister  in  the  excitement  of  politics,  and  one 
incident  of  his  English  sojourn  illustrates  at  once  his 
freedom  from  ecclesiastical  partisanship  and  his  inter- 
est in  religious  affairs.  The  Toleration  Act  of  1689, 
passed  during  Mather's  time  of  waiting  in  London, 
gave  to  Trinitarian  Protestant  Non-conformists  a  legal, 

1  Parentator,  p.  144. 


200  INCREASE  MATHER 

though  restricted,  right  to  worship.  Of  the  Non-con- 
formist bodies  the  Presbyterian,  of  which  Richard 
Baxter  and  John  Howe  were  the  guiding  spirits,  was 
the  largest,  the  Congregationalists  ranking  next  in  size 
and  counting  about  one  half  as  many  adherents.  It 
was  natural  that  this  new-found  freedom  should 
awaken  desire  for  the  union  of  bodies  so  long  under 
persecution,  and  this  desire  found  expression  prima- 
rily, it  would  appear,  in  London,  where  Increase 
Mather  labored  with  his  characteristic  activity  to  bring 
Congregationalists  and  Presbyterians  into  confedera- 
tion. To  his  efforts,  more  than  to  those  of  any  other 
man,  was  due  the  union  effected  on  April  6,  1691,  by 
which  these  Dissenters  in  London  became  one  body, 
and  through  the  efforts  of  Flavel  and  others  the  move- 
ment spread  rapidly  to  other  parts  of  England.  It 
had,  indeed,  no  lasting  history.1  Closely  related  as 
Presbyterianism  and  Congregationalism  are,  they  seem 
impossible  of  amalgamation,  and  this  confederation 
was  ruptured  in  1694,  two  years  after  Mather's  return 
to  New  England ;  but  its  written  basis,  the  so-called 
"  Heads  of  Agreement,"  crossed  the  Atlantic  by 
Mather's  influence,  and,  in  1708,  was  adopted,  to- 
gether with  the  Saybrook  Platform  of  that  year,  as  a 
legal  basis  of  the  churches  of  Connecticut — a  position 
of  political  authority  which  it  sustained  in  that  com- 
monwealth till  1784. 

1  The  story  is  told  at  length  in  Walker,  Creeds  and  Plat  for  ;ns,  440-462. 


INCREASE   MATHER  2OI 

One  event,  closely  connected  in  time  with  Mather's 
return  from  England,  cannot  be  passed  by  in  any  esti- 
mate of  his  influence  in  New  England  —  the  grim 
witchcraft  tragedy  at  Salem.  Increase  Mather's  con- 
nection with  it  was,  indeed,  much  more  remote  than 
that  of  his  son  Cotton.  The  excitement  in  the  house- 
hold of  Rev.  Samuel  Parris,  of  what  is  now  Danvers, 
with  which  the  fanatic  outburst  opened,  had  begun 
in  March,  1692,  two  months  before  Mather's  return. 
But  Cotton  and  Increase  Mather  were  so  one  in  spirit, 
that,  in  the  public  eye,  all  that  the  former  did  carried 
the  sanction  of  the  latter.  There  can  be  no  doubt, 
also,  that  Increase  Mather's  Illustrious  Providences,  of 
1684,  contributed  to  the  popular  belief  in  witchcraft, 
if  not  so  powerfully  as  his  son's  Memorable  Providences, 
Relating  to  Witchcrafts  and  Possessions,  of  1689  and  1691. 
Increase  Mather  certainly  could  have  done  much,  had 
he  been  so  disposed,  to  check  the  witchcraft  excite- 
ment, and  he  was  enlightened  enough  to  argue  against 
the  adequacy  of  several  of  the  popularly  accepted  evi- 
dences of  witchcraft  in  his  Cases  of  Conscience  Concern- 
ing Evil  Spirits ;  but  he  as  certainly  believed  in  the 
possibility  of  compacts  with  the  devil,  and,  as  late  as 
1694,  the  Harvard  trustees,  under  his  leadership,  is- 
sued an  appeal  to  the  ministers  of  New  England  for 
the  collection  of  narratives  of  enchantments.  He  and 
his  son  Cotton  tried  their  best  to  suppress  that  influ- 
ential, if  exceedingly  personal,  volume,  the  More 


202  INCREASE  MATHER 

Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World,  of  1700,  in  which 
Robert  Calef  of  Boston  expressed  a  skepticism  regard- 
ing witchcraft  which  all  intelligent  persons  have  since 
come  to  share.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Mather's  belief  in  the  reality  of  satanic  possession  was 
conscientious;  and  it  had  the  support  of  many  of  the 
best  men  of  his  age  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 
Such  a  man  as  Richard  Baxter,  for  instance,  was  no 
less  strongly  a  believer  in  these  supposedly  supernat- 
ural manifestations.  Yet,  however  we  may  excuse 
Increase  Mather,  the  witchcraft  episode  is  not  a  pleas- 
ant page  in  his  story. 

Mather  may  be  said  to  have  been  at  the  height  of 
his  influence  and  popularity  in  1692,  the  year  of  his 
return  from  England.  In  that  year,  the  colonial 
legislature  granted  to  Harvard  College  a  new  charter 
permitting  the  bestowment  of  the  higher  academic  de- 
grees, and  under  this  charter,  which  was  speedily  an- 
nulled by  the  King,  Harvard  gave  to  Increase  Mather 
the  first  doctorate  of  divinity  ever  granted  in  New 
England,  and  the  title  of  Bachelor  of  Divinity  to  the 
two  tutors,  Brattle  and  Leverett,  who  had  been  asso- 
ciated with  him.  Not  till  1771  was  the  doctor's  degree 
given  by  Harvard  again.1 

But,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  Mather's  great  ser- 
vices to  the  colony  had  given  offense  no  less  than 

1  Parentator,  pp.  170-172  ;  Sibley,  Graduates  of  Harvard,  i.,  pp. 
424,  425. 


INCREASE  MATHER  203 

satisfaction,  and  the  popular  awakening  from  the 
witchcraft  delusion  reacted  in  considerable  measure 
upon  him.  His  friend  and  nominee  for  Governor,  Sir 
William  Phips,  proved  an  unsuccessful  administrator, 
and  the  difficulties  of  securing  a  proper  charter  for 
Harvard  grew  rather  than  decreased  as  successive 
efforts  to  this  end  were  frustrated  in  1692,  1696,  1697, 
1699,  and  1700.  Mather's  parish  and  his  publications 
demanded  so  much  of  his  time  that  he  could  only 

Visit  it  [the  college]  once  or  twice  every  Week,  and 
Continue  there  a  Night  or  two  "j1  and  his  opponents 
now  made  the  very  natural  desire  that  Harvard  should 
have  a  resident  president  the  basis  for  an  attack  upon 
him.  At  successive  sessions  of  the  legislature,  in 
1693,  1695,  and  1698,  the  wish  was  expressed  by  for- 
mal vote,2  that  Mather  should  remove  from  Boston  to 
Cambridge ;  but  he  did  nothing  in  the  way  of  compli- 
ance, being  naturally  reluctant  to  leave  the  pulpit  of 
the  largest  church  in  the  colony  for  an  exclusive  devo- 
tion to  the  headship  of  a  charterless  college  of  two 
tutors  and  perhaps  sixty  students. 

As  the  last  decade  of  the  seventeenth  century  drew 
to  a  close,  however,  the  situation  was  further  compli- 
cated by  the  rise  of  what  may  be  styled  a  liberal 
movement  in  Boston  and  in  Cambridge,  though  the 
modifications  of  usage  and  thought  were  so  slight  that 

1  So  Vice- President  Willard  summarized  the  duties,  Sibley,  ii.,  p.  22. 
2Sibley,  i.,  pp.  425-427. 


2O4  INCREASE  MATHER 

it  hardly  deserves  so  pretentious  a  name.1  Increase 
Mather,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  was  strongly  a  con- 
servative. Sincerely  alarmed  by  the  declining  state  of 
religion  in  the  New  England  of  his  time,  he  considered 
a  return  to  the  old  ways,  an  enforcement  of  discipline, 
and  the  perpetuation  of  the  ideals  of  his  early  ministry 
the  true  method  of  fostering  the  religious  life.  How 
dark  the  situation  of  New  England  then  seemed  to  him 
may  be  judged  from  a  sentence  or  two  in  a  sermon2 
preached  before  Harvard  College  on  December  6,  1696: 

"  There  is  call  to  fear  lest  suddenly  there  will  be  no 
Colledge  in  New  England;  and  this  is  a  sign  that  ere  long 
there  will  be  no  Churches  there.  I  know  there  is  a  blessed 
day  to  the  visible  Church  not  far  off;  but  it  is  the  Judgment 
of  very  Learned  men  that  in  the  Glorious  Times  promised 
to  the  Church  on  Earth,  America  will  be  Hell." 

But  there  were  others  who  regarded  a  modification 
of  the  usages  of  early  New  England  as  desirable. 
Most  intimately  connected  with  Mather  of  any  of  these 
were  John  Leverett  and  William  Brattle,  who,  we 
have  already  seen,  were  long  associated  with  him  as 
tutors  under  his  presidency,  and  had  become  trustees 
of  the  college  in  1692.  Leverett  was  a  political  force. 
In  1698  he  had  entered  the  legislature,  where  he  rose 
to  the  speakership,  and  his  classes,  to  accommodate 

1  I  have  told  this  story  at  some  length  in  the  Yale  Review  for  May, 
1892  ;  and  in  Creeds  and  Platforms,  pp.  465-483. 

a  Quoted  in  Sibley,  i.,  p.  453,  from  A  Discourse  Concerning  the  Un- 
certainty of  the  Times  of  Men*  Boston,  1697- 


INCREASE  MATHER  2O5 

his  political  duties,  had  had  to  meet  at  five  in  the 
morning.1  William  Brattle  had  become  pastor  of  the 
Cambridge  church  in  1696.  In  hearty  sympathy  with 
his  brother  was  Thomas  Brattle,  the  Harvard  treas- 
urer, and  with  them  stood  Ebenezer  Pemberton,  a 
younger  tutor  at  Harvard,  and  Benjamin  Colman,  a 
young  ministerial  candidate  of  the  class  of  1692. 
Probably  the  most  significant  change  desired  by  these 
innovators  was  an  abandonment  of  the  early  New 
England  custom  of  requiring  a  public  account,  or  re- 
lation, as  it  was  styled,  of  religious  experience  from 
all  who  united  with  a  church  —  a  requirement  conso- 
nant enough  with  the  intense  and  conscious  piety  of 
the  founders,  but  which  the  lowered  tone  of  spiritual 
life  had  rendered  irksome  to  many.  They  also  wished 
that  all  baptized  adults  who  contributed  to  a  minister's 
support  should  share  in  his  selection,  and  that  any 
children  presented  by  a  Christian  sponsor,  whether  par- 
ent or  not,  should  be  admitted  to  baptism.  They  fur- 
thermore desired  an  enrichment  of  the  service  by  the 
devotional  reading  of  some  portion  of  the  Scriptures, 
without  explanatory  comment, — a  kind  of  Prayer- 
Book-like  reading  which  the  early  Puritans  had  stig- 
matized as  dumb  reading, — and  the  occasional  liturgical 
use  of  the  Lord's  Prayer.  These  modifications  do  not 
seem  very  radical  to  us,  but  to  Mather  they  appeared 
full  of  peril.  In  1697,  he  attacked  the  innovators' 

1  Sibley,  iii.,  p.  183, 


206  INCREASE   MATHER 

view  of  the  needlessness  of  relations  in  a  letter  to  the 
church  at  Cambridge  of  which  Brattle  was  pastor,  and 
to  the  students  of  the  college;  and  three  months  later 
followed  this  charge  into  the  enemy's  camp  by  a  protest 
from  his  church  to  that  of  Charlestown,  which  had 
chosen  its  minister  in  the  way  the  innovators  desired. 
All  this  seemed  dictatorial,  and  though  undoubtedly 
conscientious,  was  none  the  less  irritating.  The  result 
was  that  Thomas  Brattle  and  some  Boston  sympa- 
thizers constructed  a  new  meeting-house  in  Boston  in 
1698,  called  Benjamin  Colman  home  from  England  to 
its  pulpit,  requesting  him  to  procure  ordination  before 
sailing  from  more  sympathetic  hands  than  he  would 
find  among  Mather's  friends  in  Boston,  and,  on  De- 
cember 12,  1699,  organized  a  new  church  —  Brattle 
Church  —  without  summoning  the  advice  of  any  coun- 
cil, to  occupy  the  meeting-house  and  to  practice  the 
innovations.  These  acts  had  the  approval  of  the  other 
members  of  the  liberal  party,  and  they  called  out  from 
Increase  Mather,  in  March,  1700,  his  most  interesting 
contribution  to  Congregational  history  and  polity — his 
Order  of  the  Gospel.  In  this  tract  he  condemned  the 
Brattle  Church  principles,  and  declared  that  to  ap- 
prove them  was  to  "  give  away  the  whole  Congrega- 
tional cause  at  once,  and  a  great  part  of  the  Presbyterian 
Discipline  also."  He  remarked,  with  pointed  refer- 
ence to  Colman's  English  ordination,  that,  "  to  say 
that  a  Wandering  Levite  who  has  no  Flock  is  a 


INCREASE  MATHER  2O/ 

Pastor,  is  as  good  sense  as  to  say,  that  he  that  has  no 
Children  is  a  Father";  and  the  allusion  to  his  sub- 
ordinates at  the  college  was  unmistakable  in  his  ex- 
hortation, "  Let  the  Churches  Pray  for  the  Colledge 
particularly,  that  God  may  ever  Bless  that  Society  with 
faithful  Tutors  that  will  be  true  to  Christ's  Interests  and 
theirs,  and  not  Hanker  after  new  and  loose  wayes."  1 
Two  ecclesiastical  parties  had  evidently  developed, 
and  Mather's  opponents  were  strong  enough  to  have 
the  question  of  his  non-residence  reopened  by  the 
legislature  in  July,  1700.  Thus  alarmed,  he  actually 
removed  to  Cambridge  for  a  few  months;  but  the  ab- 
sence from  his  family  distressed  him,  and  he  proposed 
to  the  legislature  that  he  continue  on  the  non-residen- 
tial basis  on  which  his  presidency  had  been  actually 
placed  so  long.  But  while  the  representatives  of  the 
country  towns  supported  him  loyally  in  the  lower 
house,  sympathetic  with  his  conservative  position,  the 
upper  house,  largely  from  Boston  and  vicinity,  and 
hostile  to  him  for  many  reasons,  personal,  political, 
and  religious,  on  September  6,  1701,  declined  to  ap- 
prove Mather's  continuance  as  president,  and  thus 
dropped  him  from  the  office  which  he  had  filled  for 
sixteen  years.  How  largely  personal  the  action  of  the 
legislature  was  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  it  immediately 
made  Samuel  Willard  of  the  Boston  Old  South  Church 
his  successor  on  precisely  the  same  terms  of  non-resi- 

1  Order  of  the  Gospel,  pp.  8,  n,  12,  102. 


208  INCREASE  MATHER 

dence  —  the  court  keeping  a  show  of  consistency  by 
calling  him  vice-president,  instead  of  president. 

To  Mather  the  defeat  was  a  bitter  disappointment, 
and  its  gall  and  wormwood  continued  as  long  as  he, 
and  his  son  Cotton,  his  associate  in  the  struggle,  lived. 
Nor  was  it  only  the  pain  of  a  personal  discomfiture  or 
the  disregard  of  services  which  Mather  was  conscious 
were  well  rendered  and  which  seemed  to  him  to  de- 
serve a  better  recompense.  For,  besides  the  personal 
motives  which  had  entered  into  the  struggle,  his  had 
been  a  serious  and  honest  attempt  to  save  the  college 
from  what  he  deemed  essential  spiritual  harm,  and  de- 
feat seemed  the  ruin  of  a  cause  which  he  believed  to  be 
that  of  the  Gospel.  But  the  defeat  was  none  the  less 
final.  When  Willard  died,  in  1707,  Mather  hoped 
that  the  office  would  come  to  him  or  to  his  son  Cot- 
ton, but  he  hoped  in  vain.  His  innovating  former 
subordinate,  John  Leverett,  was  the  choice,  and  the 
bitterness  of  the  disappointment  was  shown  in  a  vio- 
lent attack  by  father  and  son  on  Governor  Joseph 
Dudley,  whom  they  looked  upon  as  responsible  for 
this  second  shattering  of  their  hopes. 

Increase  Mather  was  sixty-two  years  of  age  when  he 
lost  the  presidency  of  Harvard,  and  what  was  to  him 
far  more  important,  when  he  saw  in  his  own  rejection 
the  defeat  of  the  conservative  party  for  whose  pre- 
dominance in  Church  and  State  he  labored.  He  had 
twenty-two  years  of  life  yet  before  him.  Though  he 


INCREASE  MATHER  2OQ 

was  to  some  extent  passed  by  in  the  current  of  the 
age,  though  he  felt  the  bitterness  of  disappointment 
always,  and  a  sense  that  his  services  to  the  colony  had 
not  received  the  appreciation  that  their  worth  de- 
served, and  thus  his  old  age  became  in  some  consider- 
able degree  one  of  repining,  it  was  a  time  of  usefulness, 
fruitfulness,  and  honor  to  the  end.  The  estimate  in 
which  he  was  held  by  his  clerical  brethren  is  shown  by 
their  unanimous  choice  of  him  in  April,  1715,  to  bear 
the  congratulatory  address,  then  expected  at  the 
accession  of  a  sovereign,  to  George  I. —an  honor 
which  his  age  compelled  him  to  decline.1  His  church 
valued  his  services  and  listened  to  him  with  pleasure 
so  long  as  he  was  in  physical  strength  to  preach.  His 
wisdom  was  much  sought  at  councils  and  other  eccle- 
siastical gatherings.  And  his  activity  with  his  pen 
was  constant.  In  the  case  of  the  other  leaders  of 
early  Congregationalism  whom  we  have  already  con- 
sidered I  have  attempted  to  give  a  fairly  complete 
account  of  their  writings.  With  Mather  their  num- 
ber and  variety  make  such  a  treatment  impossible. 
Though  the  productions  of  his  pen  are  far  from  equal- 
ing in  number  the  four  hundred  and  fifty-one  titles 
attributed  to  his  son,  Cotton,  they  reach  the  suffi- 
ciently remarkable  total  of  one  hundred  and  fifty- 
nine.2  Of  these,  more  than  one  half  were  written  after 

1  Parentator,  p.  194. 

2  A  full  list  may  be  found  in  Sibley,  i. ,  pp.  438-469. 


210  INCREASE  MATHER 

his  retirement  from  the  presidency  of  Harvard  in  1701. 
Most  are  small  in  size,  but  many  are  considerable 
volumes,  and  the  range  of  topics  which  they  cover  is 
as  wide  as  their  number  is  surprising.  Some  are  ser- 
mons on  events  of  public  interest,  fires,  earthquakes, 
storms,  comets,  executions.  Others  are  biographical 
sketches  of  deceased  worthies,  or  narratives  of  import- 
ant public  events,  like  the  Indian  wars;  yet  others  are 
political  tracts,  designed  to  present  the  New  England 
cause,  as  he  saw  it,  to  New  England's  critics.  Re- 
ligious controversy  has  its  ample  place,  of  course,  but 
by  far  the  larger  part  of  these  volumes,  great  and  small, 
have  a  distinctly  edificatory  aim,  their  prime  purpose 
being  to  upbuild  the  spiritual  life.  Increase  Mather's 
style,  as  compared  with  the  curiously  pedantic,  whim- 
sical diction  of  his  son  Cotton,  was  simple  and  direct, 
though  with  some  tendencies  toward  the  same  aberra- 
tions that  appear  in  the  latter's  writings.  He  reveals 
himself  everywhere  the  man  of  learning  and  of  wide 
observation  of  the  world.  Yet  much  of  this  literature 
is  trite  and  uninteresting  to  modern  readers.  Much 
is  commonplace.  But  it  did  not  seem  so  then.  The 
first  New  England  newspaper  that  had  any  duration  was 
not  printed  till  1704;  few  non-ministerial  households 
had  any  volumes,  save  perhaps  a  Bible,  an  almanac, 
and  a  few  treatises  of  the  older  Puritan  divines.  To 
such  a  generation  writings  like  those  of  Mather  came 
with  all  the  freshness,  timeliness,  and  interest  of  the 


INCREASE  MATHER  211 

modern  religious  newspaper.  They  met  a  real  need ; 
and  in  a  way  that  made  the  New  England  of  that  day 
truly  debtor  to  him  who  wrote. 

Mather's  tolerance  grew  with  his  years.  In  1679, 
when  he  framed  the  conclusions  of  the  Reforming 
Synod,  he  wrote  of  the  Dissenters  then  in  New  Eng- 
land : 1 

"  Men  have  set  up  their  Threshold  by  Gods  Threshold, 
and  their  Posts  by  his  Post.  Quakers  are  false  Worship- 
pers ;  and  such  Anabaptists  as  have  risen  up  amongst  us 
.  .  .  do  no  better  than  set  up  an  Altar  against  the  Lords 
Altar." 

But,  in  1718,  he  shared  in  the  ordination  of  Elisha 
Callender  over  the  Baptist  church  in  Boston ;  and  in 
the  Preface  to  the  sermon  which  his  son  Cotton 
preached  on  the  occasion  he  bore  testimony  that  "  all 
of  the  brethren  of  that  church  with  whom  I  have  any 
acquaintance  .  .  .  are,  in  the  judgment  of  rational 
charity,  godly  persons."3  His  pecuniary  generosity 
was  unfailing.  Besides  the  tenth  of  his  income  which 
he  devoted  to  benevolence  as  a  matter  of  conscience, 
he  stood  ready  to  render  aid  to  the  deserving ;  and  the 
church  over  which  he  was  pastor  was  noted  for  its 
liberality  in  gifts  in  that  day  when  contributions  for 
other  than  home  expenses  were  unusual. 

On  entering  the  fiftieth  year  of  his  ministry,  in  1713, 

1  Necessity  of  Reformation,  p.  3. 

2  Backus,  Hist,  of  New  England,  i.,  p.  421.    1871. 


212  INCREASE  MATHER 

Mather  proffered  his  resignation  to  his  people.  Its 
acceptance  was  refused,  though  the  church  speedily 
voted  that  he  should  preach  "  only  when  he  should 
feel  himself  able  and  inclin'd."1  So,  blessed  in  the 
kindly  regard  of  his  own  congregation,  and  in  the  con- 
tinued association  of  his  son  with  him  in  his  ministry 
and  labors,  whatever  disappointments  he  may  have  felt 
over  other  circumstances  of  his  later  life,  he  gradually 
relaxed  his  hold  on  the  world  of  which  he  had  been 
so  conspicuous  a  citizen.  His  enfeebled  condition  con- 
fined him  to  the  house  after  September,  1719;  the 
thought  of  his  approaching  rest  in  the  presence  of 
his  Lord  seemed  increasingly  attractive  to  him.  To 
his  London  friend,  Thomas  Hollis,  who  had  inquired 
if  he  were  still  in  "  the  land  of  the  living,"  he  sent  the 
message:  "No!  Tell  him,  I  am  going  to  it;  This 
Poor  World  is  the  Land  of  the  Dying.  'T  is  Heaven 
that  is  the  true  Land  of  the  Living."  *  But,  as  in  his 
father's  case,  his  suffering  was  prolonged,  and  he  died, 
after  a  distressing  illness,  but  rejoicing  in  confidence 
of  entrance  into  the  eternal  city,  on  August  23,  1723, 
at  the  ripe  age  of  eighty-five.  They  honored  him,  so 
his  son  recorded,  "  with  a  Greater  Funeral  than  had 
ever  been  seen  for  any  Divine •,  in  these  .  .  .  parts 
/  of  the  World  " ; 3  and  it  was  fitting  that  they  should, 
/  for  the  Massachusetts  of  that  day  had  lost  its  most 
I  gifted  son. 

1  Parentator,  p.  197.  *  Ibid.,  p.  209.  *  Ibid.,  p.  Ml. 


INCREASE  MATHER  21$ 

Last  summer,  toward  evening,  I  walked  through  the 
crowded  and  foreign  streets,  where  once  his  congrega- 
tion dwelt,  to  the  simple  tomb  in  Copp's  Hill  burying- 
ground  where  he  sleeps.  The  grateful  air  blowing 
across  the  open  hilltop  as  the  hot  summer  sun  sank 
had  drawn  many  from  the  crowded  tenements  of  the 
North  End  to  the  cemetery.  Many  of  the  faces  were 
unmistakably  Hebrew  or  Italian  ;  the  boy  who  pointed 
out  the  tomb  to  me  was  of  Irish  birth.  I  did  not  see 
one  who  seemed  of  the  old  Puritan  race  for  which 
Mather  labored.  The  thought  was  inevitable  that  as 
the  scene  of  his  life  work  had  altered,  so  the  age  in 
which  he  lived,  its  struggles,  its  endeavors,  its  dis- 
appointments, and  its  achievements  had  vanished  with- 
out leaving  a  trace  behind.  But  no!  as  one  looked 
over  the  city,  in  its  strength  and  stateliness,  as  one 
glanced  at  the  shaft  on  Bunker  Hill  and  remembered 
the  spirit  and  the  deeds  of  which  it  stands  the  symbol, 
and  as  one  thought  of  the  great  university  beyond, 
the  truer  feeling  came,  that  these  strong  men  so  built 
themselves  into  the  New  England  that  they  loved  as 
to  make  the  more  populous,  more  cosmopolitan,  more 
generous,  and  more  tolerant  New  England  of  to-day 
possible.  Whatever  strength  New  England  has  to- 
day she  draws  from  the  molding  power  of  men  of 
whom  Increase  Mather  was  a  conspicuous  example. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS 


VI. 
JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

TO  come  to  Andover  with  a  lecture  on  Jonathan 
Edwards  seems  wellnigh  an  impertinence. 
Here,  where  his  name  has  been  honored  more,  if  it 
be  possible,  than  anywhere  else  in  New  England, 
where  his  life  and  works  have  long  been  familiarly 
and  affectionately  studied,  where  most  of  his  unpub- 
lished manuscripts  are  guarded,  there  is  nothing 
novel  that  a  lecturer  can  offer;  nor  can  he  expect  his 
knowledge  of  his  theme  to  compare  in  thoroughness 
with  that  of  several  of  his  hearers.  Yet  the  lecturer 
is  reminded  that  this  is  a  course  on  Congregational- 
ism, not  on  unfamiliar  Congregationalists ;  and  to  treat 
of  the  eighteenth  century  without  glancing  up,  at 
least  for  a  few  moments,  at  the  towering  figure  of  our 
most  original  New  England  theologian,  is  like  shut- 
ting out  from  memory  the  Presidential  Range  as  one 
thinks  of  the  White  Mountains. 

Passing  along  the  sandy  road  that  skirts  the  edge  of 
the  low  bluff  above  the  level  meadowland,  that  borders 
the  east  bank  of  the  Connecticut  River,  in  the  town  of 
South  Windsor,  one  sees  by  the  roadside  the  site  where 

217 


2l8  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

stood,  till  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
"  plain  two-story  house  "  '  in  which  Jonathan  Edwards 
was  born.  Though  pleasant  farming  country,  there  is 
little  in  the  immediate  surroundings  to  detain  the  eye; 
but  the  blue  hills  beyond  the  river  to  the  westward 
stretch  away  into  the  distance  as  attractively  now  as 
they  did  then  when,  if  tradition  is  to  be  trusted,  Jona- 
than's autocratic  father,  the  parish  minister,  warned  a 
neighbor  whose  refusal  to  remove  a  wide-spreading 
tree  annoyed  him,  that  if  this  disrespectful  conduct  was 
continued  he  would  not  baptize  that  contumacious 
neighbor's  child.  Behind  the  house,  to  the  eastward  a 
few  rods,  rises  a  low,  tree-covered  hill,  cutting  off  the 
view  in  that  direction,  and  affording  a  retreat  to  which 
father  and  son  were  accustomed  to  withdraw  in  pleasant 
weather  for  meditation  or  for  prayer.2  Here  at  what 
is  now  South  Windsor,  Timothy  Edwards,  Jonathan's 
father,  exercised  an  able,  spiritual,  and  conspicuously 
learned  ministry  from  1694  to  his  death  in  1758."  Grand- 
son of  William  Edwards,  an  early  settler  of  Hartford, 
and  son  of  Richard  Edwards,  a  prominent  merchant  of 
Hartford,  and  of  his  erratic  wife,  Elisabeth  Tuthill,4 
Timothy  Edwards  had  graduated  with  distinction  from 

1  See  J.  A.  Stoughton,   Windsor  Farmes,  p.  46,  Hartford,  1883,  and 
H.  R.  Stiles,  History  and  Genealogies  of  Ancient  Windsor,  i.,  p.  556, 
Hartford,  1891.     The  house  stood  till  1813. 

2  Stoughton,  ibid.,  pp.  46,  47. 

3  Ibid. ,  passim. 

4  See  Colonial  Records  of  Connecticut,  iv.,  p.  59;  Stoughton,  ibid., 
pp.  39,  69. 


JON  A  THAN  ED  WARDS  2ig 

Harvard  College  in  1691,  and  was  always  a  man  of 
marked  intellectual  power.  The  considerable  list  of 
boys  fitted  in  his  home  for  college  1  bears  witness  to 
his  abilities  as  a  teacher,  and  the  judgment  of  his  con- 
gregation that  he  was  a  more  learned  man  and  a  more 
animated  preacher  than  his  son,  Jonathan,2  reflects  the 
esteem  in  which  he  was  held  by  the  people  of  his 
charge.  His  wife,  Jonathan's  mother,  was  a  daughter 
of  Solomon  Stoddard,  of  Northampton,  the  ablest 
minister  of  the  Connecticut  valley  when  the  seven- 
teenth century  passed  into  the  eighteenth,  and  grand- 
daughter of  John  Warham,  the  first  pastor  of  Windsor. 

Into  this  intellectual,  strenuous,  and  yet  cheerful 
home  in  this  bit  of  rural  New  England  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards was  born  on  October  5,  1703.  Here  he  grew  up, 
the  fifth  among  eleven  children  and  the  only  brother 
among  ten  tall  sisters.  Here  he  was  fitted  for  college  in 
his  father's  study,  and  the  intellectual  sympathy  thus 
begun  between  father  and  son  was  to  be  a  lifelong  bond. 

Youthful  precocity  is  by  no  means  an  infallible 
prophecy  of  mature  strength,  but  with  Jonathan 
Edwards  the  mind  received  an  early  development  and 
manifested  a  grasp  that  was  little  less  than  marvelous 
at  an  age  when  most  schoolboys  are  scarcely  emerg- 
ing from  childhood.  His  observations  on  nature, 

1  For  some  of  these  names  see  Stoughton,  Windsor  Farmes,  pp.  77, 
78,  101-103. 

2  S.  E.  Dwight,  Life  of  Pres.  Edwards,  p.  17.     New  York,  1830. 


220 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS 


notably   the   well-known   paper   on 

.spider,  apparently  written  when   Edwards  was_about 

the   age  of  twelve;  a*ndjrven  more  himotes-on  the 

immediate  fruit  of  his  reflections  upon  Locke's  famous 
tssay,  \vhicli  he  had  read  when  fourteen,  witness  to 
his  early  intellectual  maturity.  The  same  precocious 
strength  of  mind  is  apparent  in  his  less  easily  dated, 
but  youthful,  attainment  of  some  of  the  positions  of 
Berkeley  or  Malebranche —  an  attainment  that  seems 
to  have  been  due  to  an  independent  development, 
rather  than  to  acquaintance  with  their  writings.1 

Naturally,  such  a  boy  went  early  to  college;  and  we 

find  Edwards  ^n  raring  Valp  in  .S^pJTIpbpr,   T7T6,  ^b^1" 

a  mon^^befoj^_tlie_cio?<"  nf  hj^  thirteenth  year.  The 
institution  whose  distinguished  graduate  he  was  to 
become  was  far  enough  removed  from  the  university 
of  the  present.  Founded  in  1701,  and  therefore  only 
two  years  older  than  Edwards  himself,  its  precarious 
existence  had  thus  far  been  spent  at  Saybrook;  but 
the  question  of  removal  to  New  Haven  was  in  heated 
debate  just  at  the  time  that  Edwards  entered,3  and  a 
month  after  the  beginning  of  his  Freshman  year  was 

1  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  22-63,  664-702  ;  G.  P.  Fisher,  Discussions  in 
History  and  Theology,  pp.  228-232  ;  Allen,  Jonathan  Ed^vards,  pp. 
3-31  ;  E.  C.  Smyth,  in  Proceedings  of  the  American  Antiquarian 
Society  for  1895,  pp.  212-236  ;  Fisher,  History  of  Christian  Doc  trine , 
pp.  396,  403.  H.  N.  Gardiner,  Jonathan  Edwards  :  A  Retrospect,  pp. 
115-160,  Boston,  1901. 

'2  F.  B.  Dexter,  Biographical  Sketches  of  the  Graduates  of  Yale,  i., 
pp.  159,  160. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  221 

decided  by  the  trustees.  Their  decision  in  favor  of 
New  Haven  was  unpopular  in  the  section  of  the  colony 
in  which  Edwards's  home  was  situated;  and,  before 
the  close  of  1716,  a  considerable  portion  of  the  students 
of  the  distracted  college  had  gathered  at  Wethersfield 
under  the  instruction  of  two  tutors,  one,  a  recent  grad- 
uate of  Harvard,  the  other,  three  years  an  alumnus  of 
Yale.1  Of  these  emigrating  dissenters  Edwards  was 
one;  and  at  Wethersfield  he  remained  till  the  healing 
of  the  division  in  the  early  summer  of  1719  carried 
him  to  New  Haven.8  Here  he  lived  in  the  newly 
erected  hall  and  dormitory,  then  known  distinctively 
as  Yale  College,  in  a  room  rented  at  the  moderate  rate 
of  twenty  shillings  a  year;  and  here,  too,  he  boarded 
in  commons  at  a  charge  of  five  shillings — 83^  cents — a 
week.  These  prices  were  in  no  way  exceptionally 
moderate,  nor  is  there  any  evidence  of  which  I  am 
aware  that  Edwards's  student  days  were  not  as  com- 
fortable from  a  pecuniary  standpoint  as  those  of  any 
of  his  position  in  the  commonwealth.  Here  at  New 
Haven  he  graduated,  inJSeptember,  1720,  at  the  head 
of  a  class  of  ten,  after  a  course  involving  little  more 
than  an  acquaintance  with  a  few  books  of  Virgil  and 
orations  of  Cicero,  the  Greek  Testament,  the  Psalms^ 
in  Hebrew,  the  elements  of  Logic,  Ames's  Theology 

1  Elisha   Williams,    Harvard,    1711,    afterward    president    of    Yale, 
speaker  of  the  Connecticut  lower  house,  judge  of  the  Superior  Court, 
and  colonel  of  the  Connecticut  troops  ;    and  Samuel  Smith,  Yale,  1713. 

2  See  Edwards's  letter  of  March  26,  1719,  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  29,  30. 


222  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

and  Cases  of  Conscience,  and  a  smattering  of  Physics, 
Mathematics^  Geography,  and  Astronomy.1  In  Ed- 
wards's  case,  however,  this  course  had  been  greatly 
supplemented  by  the  reading  at  Wethersfield  of  such 
books  as  he  could  borrow  or  purchase,  and  at  New 
Haven  by  the  use  of  the  largest  and  best  selected 
library  then  in  Connecticut,  which  the  diligence  of 
Jeremiah  Dummer  and  of  other  friends  in  England 
had  procured  for  the  college.  It  was  doubtless  the 
opportunity  afforded  by  this  library  that  kept  Edwards 
at  New  Haven  engaged  in  the  study  of  theology  till 
the  summer  of  1722,  when,  it  seems  probable,  he  was 
licensed  to  preach.8 

Somewhere  in  this  period  of  study,  probably  about 
the  time  of  his  graduation,3  Edwards  passed  through 
the  deepest  experience  that  can  come  to  a  human 
soul,  a  conscious  change  in  its  relations  to  God.  As 
John  Wesley  was  a  Christian  and  a  minister  before  he 
was  "  converted,"  and  yet  was  wrought  upon  mightily 
by  that  spiritual  experience  that  came  to  him  as  he 
heard  Luther's  Preface  to  the  Commentary  on  Romans 
read  in  the  Moravian  Chapel  in  Aldersgate  Street, 
London,  at  a  quarter  before  nine  on  the  evening  of  May 

1  Dexter,  Biographical  Sketches,  pp.  115,  141-143,  177,  200,  203  ; 
Dwight,  Life,  p.  32. 

-  Hopkins,  Life  and  Character  of  ,  .  .  Jonathan  Edwards  (Boston, 
jyoS)*  ed.  Northampton,  1804,  p.  4  ;  Dwight,  Life,  p.  63. 

3  Dwight,  Life,  p.  58.  He  is  supposed  to  have  joined  the  church  of 
which  his  father  was  pastor  soon  after  his  graduation. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  22$ 

24,  1738,  so  Edwards,  moved  by  religious  convictions 
when^boy  and  again  when  in  college,  yetj-ebellious_ 
against  the  absoluteness  of  the  divine  sovereignty 
which  his  theology  and  his  philosophy  alike  demanded, 
came  in  an  instant  to  a  "  sense  of  the  glory  of  the 
divine  Being-"1  —  to  quote  his  own  words  —  which 
thenceforth  changed  the  entire  conscious  attitude  of 
his  soul  toward  God.  And  as  Calvin,  after  the  severe 
struggle  involved  in  the  submission  of  his  will  to  that 
of  God,  made  the  divine  sovereignty  the  corner-stone 
of  his  system,  so  Edwards  now  found  that  doctrine 
"  exceedingly  pleasant,  bright,  and  sweet."  But  it 
was  not,  as  with  Calvin,  a  submission  to  an  infinite 
authority  that  was  the  central  thought  of  the  experi- 
ence that  came  to  Edwards  as  he  read  the  words  "  Now  / 
unto  the  King  eternal,  immortal,  invisible,  the  only 
wise  God,  be  honor  and  glory  forever  and  ever,  Amen." 
Rather  it  was  the  high-wrought,  mystic  conception  of 
the  excellence  of  the  God  to  whom  his  heart  went  out 
in  a  flood  of  devotion  that  mastered  him  with  an  over- 
whelming sense  of  the  divine  presence  and  majesty. 
With  true  mystic  outflowing  of  affection  he  seems  to 
have  had  relatively  little  sense  of  a  burden  of  the  guilt 
of  sin  ;  he  was  above  the  plane  which  makes  the  ques- 
tion of  one's  own  interests  central.  By  him  sin  was 
felt  chiefly  in  a  profoundly  humiliating  sense  of  his 
own  infinite  unlikeness  to  God^  But  he  longed  with 

1  See  Hopkins,  Life,  pp.  24-42  ;  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  60,  61. 


224  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

all  the  power  of  an  ardent  nature  to  "  enjoy  that  God, 
and  be  rapt  up  to  him  in  heaven,  and  be,  as  it  were, 
swallowed  up  in  him  forever."  And  this  new  appre- 
hension of  "  the  glorious  majesty  and  grace  of  God  " 
found  poetic  satisfaction  in  enjoyment  of  Solomon's 
Song,  in  sympathy  with  external  nature,  the  sky, 
clouds,  "  grass,  flowers,  trees,"  or  the  majesty  of  the 
lightning  and  the  power  of  the  storm. 

This  new  sense  of  the  divine  glory,  almost  a  purg 
intuition  of  the  majesty,  holiness,  and  power  of  Godri 
satisfied  the  mystic  and  imaginative  side  of  Edwards's 
nature,  no  less  than  the  speculations  which  found  in 
all  being  but  the  manifestation  of  spirit,  and  especially 
of  the  potent  Spirit  of  God  operating  directly  on  the 
human  spirit,  satisfied  the  philosophic  tendency  so 
strangely  joined  with  an  almost  oriental  wealth  of 
fancy  in  this  remarkable  man.  And  from  both  sides 
of  his  thinking  his  theology  flowed :  rock-ribbed  in  its 
speculative  logic,  in  its  limitation  of  the  power  of 
human  freedorn,  in  its  recognition  of  the  immediate 
agency  of  God  in  all  events,  in  itsemphasis  on  the; 
absoTutF  and  arbitrary  sovereignty  of  the  Creator  over 
his  creatures;  yet  insistent  on  a  "  conversion  "  the 
chief  resultant  of  which  was  an  affectionate  delight  in 
God,  and  finding  the  highest  Christian  experience  in 
a  mystical  and  almost  incomprehensible  spflgp  of  the 
divine  glory  manifested  io  the  loving  human  soul. 

This  experience,  no  less  than  Edwards's  belief  in  the 


JON  A  THA  N  EDWARDS  22$ 

immediacy  and  power  of  the  operations  of  the  divine 
Spirit  on  the  soul  of  man,  led  him  to  emphasize  a 
struggling  and  conscious  "  conversion/'  rather  than  a 
scarce-observed  process  of  growth,  as  the  normal  in- 
stead of  the  occasional  method  of  entrance  into  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  This  is  a  view  always  widely  preva- 
lent in  times  of  deep  religious  quickening.  It  was 
preached  in  early  New  England  by  Hooker,  Cotton, 
Shepard,  and  the  founders  generally.  Wesley  and 
Whitefield  taught  it.  And  it  was  set  forth  with 
such  persuasiveness  by  Edwards  as  an  underlying 
principle  of  his  conception  of  the  religious  life  as 
profoundly  to  affect  New  England  for  a  century 
after  his  death.  Emphasizing  as  it  does  the  great 
truth  of  the  divine  origin  of  all  Christian  life,  its  over- 
emphasis as  a  necessary  law  tends  to  rob  baptism  of 
significance,  to  minimize  the  covenant  relationships  of 
Christian  households,  and  to  leave  the  children  of  the 
truest  servants  of  God  presumptively  outside  the 
Christian  fold  till  consciously  touched  by  the  trans- 
forming power  of  the  Spirit.  Edwards's  own  son  and 
namesake  could  write  years  later  :l  "  Though  I  had, 
during  my  father's  life,  some  convictions  of  sin  and 
danger,  yet  I  have  no  reason  to  believe  I  had  any  real 
religion,  till  some  years  after  his  death." 

In  the  power  of  these  thoughts  Edwards  entered  on 

1  Letter  of  March  30,  1789,  in  Hawksley,  Memoirs  of  the  Rev.  Jona- 
than Edwards,  p.  255.      London,  1815. 
15 


226  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

his  first  pastoral  experience,  taking  charge  of  a  small 
Presbyterian  church  in  New  York  City  from  August, 

1722,  to  April,  1723  —  a  relation  which  the  congrega- 
tion would  gladly  have  made  permanent.     This  prac- 
tical experience  but  deepened  his  previous  aspirations 
and  convictions  into  a  remarkable   series  of  seventy 
resolutions.     Some  are  the  familiar  maxims  of  earnest 
men,  as  "  To  live  with  all  my  might  while  I  do  live  " ; 
but  more  represent  the  peculiar  coloring  of  Edwards's 
religious  life,  as  '/Never  to  do  any  manner  of  thing, 
whether  in  soul  or  body,  less  or  more,  but  what  tends 
to  the  glory  of  God,  nor  be,  nor  suffer  it,  if  I  can  pos- 
sibly avoid  it.'  j 

New  York,  though  pleasant,  did  not  seem  to  Ed- 
wards a  hopeful  field  for  his  life  work,  and  in  May, 

1723,  he  was  back  in  his  father's  house  in  South  Wind- 
sor.    But  other  churches  speedily  sought  his  services. 
North  Haven  called  him  in  vain  in  September,  1723; 
and,  in  November  of  that  year,  he  accepted  an  invita- 
tion to  the  pastorate  at  Bolton,  a  little  eastward  of  his 
home.    Yet,  for  some  reason  now  unknown  he  did  not 
enter  upon  this  ministry,  and  June,  1724,  found  him, 
instead,  in  a  tutorship  at  Yale  College.2 

The  period  was  one  of  great  distraction  in  that  much 
vexed  institution.  Without  a  president  since  the  de- 
fection of  Rector  Cutler  to  Episcopacy  in  1722,  its 

1  In  full  in  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  68-73. 

2  Dexter,  Biographical  Sketches,  pp.  218,  219. 


JON  A  THA  N  EDWARDS  2  2  7 

government  and  instruction  were  in  the  hands  of  two 
young  and  frequently  changed  tutors.  During  Ed- 
wards's  incumbency,  begun  when  he  was  not  yet 
twenty-two,  the  work  was  done  with  credit  to  himself 
and  benefit  to  the  college;  and  he  might  have  con- 
tinued in  it  for  several  years  longer  had  not  a  most 
attractive  invitation  come  to  him  from  the  people  of 
Northampton  to  become  the  colleague  of  his  grand- 
father, the  venerable  Solomon  Stoddard.  .Induced^ 
by  family  ties,  drawn  by  the  prominence  of  the  con- 
gregation, then  esteemed  the  largest  in  Massachusetts 
outside  of  Boston,  and  by  that  repute  for  a  certain 
aristocratic  and  social  charm  which  Northampton  then, 
as  now,  enjoyed,  he  resigned  his  tutorship  and,  on 
February  15,  I727,jwas  ordained  to  the  colleague  pas- 
torate of  the  Northampton  churctTI  The  death  of^ 
Stoddard  two  years  later  '  left  him  in  sole  charge. 

The  establishment  of  these  ties  was  speedily  fol- 
lowed by  the  formation  of  others  of  a  more  personal 
character.  On  July  28,  1727,  he  married  Sarah  Pier- 
pont,  daughter  of  Rev.  James  Pierpont  of  New  Haven, 
and  great-granddaughter  of  Thomas  Hooker,  the 
founder  of  Hartford.  Our  New  England  ancestors 
married  early, — the  bride  and  groom  were  seventeen 
and  twenty-four, —  but  Edwards  had  long  been  at- 
tracted by  the  character,  even  more  than  by  the 
beauty,  of  the  young  woman  who  thus  linked  her  life 

1  February  n,  1729. 


228  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

with  his ;  and  his  description  nf  her  ar  thp  agp  nf  tht>- 
jeen  is  one  of  the;  few  driving  hif*  nf  pnetir  prnsp 
which  the  rather  arid  literature  of  eighteenth-century 
New  England  produced.1  Mrs.  Edwards  was  well 
worthy  of  his  regard.  Hers  was  a  nature  not  only  of 
remarkable  susceptibility  to  religious  impression,  but 
of  executive  force,  cheerful  courage,  social  grace,  and 
sweet,  womanly  leadership.2  She  added  cheer  to  his 
house,  supplemented  his  shyness  and  want  of  small 
talk,  and  it  was  no  inapt,  though  facetious,  tribute  to 
her  general  repute  that  affirmed  ' '  that  she  had  learned  a 
shorter  road  to  heaven  than  her  husband."  Devoted 
to  that  husband,  whose  frail  health  required  constant 
care,  administering  a  large  part  of  the  business  affairs 
of  the  home  with  cheerful  forgetfulness  of  her  own  dis- 
abilities that  he  might  be  free  to  spend  his  accustomed 
thirteen  hours  daily  in  his  study,  or  to  take  his  solitary 
meditative  walks  and  rides,4  she  brought  up  eight 
daughters  and  three  sons  and  bore  her  full  share  of 
labor  in  the  vicissitudes  of  Edwards's  life.  Warmly 
attached  to  each  other,  husband  and  wife  were  but 

1  In  full,  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  114,  115  ;  Allen,  pp.  45,  46. 

2  Sketch  by  Hopkins  in  his  Life  and  Character  of  the  late  Rev.  Mr. 
Jonathan  Ed-wards,  Boston,  1765  ;  see  also  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  113-115, 
127-131,  171-190  ;  Allen,  pp.  44-49- 

3  Allen,  pp.  47,  48. 

4  Hopkins,  p.  43  ;  Dwight,  Life,  110-113.    Prof.  F.  B.  Dexter  informs 
me  that  an  examination  of  Edwards's  unpublished  correspondence  shows 
that  he  was  more  of  a  man  of  business  than  his  older  biographers  be- 
lieved him  to  be.     He  certainly  left  a  larger  estate  than  most  New  Eng- 
land ministers  of  his  time. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  229 

briefly  separated  by  death,  she  surviving  him  less 
than  seven  months.1  Every  recollection  of  Edwards's 
achievements  should  also  involve  a  remembrance  of 
the  devoted  and  solicitous  care  which  made  much  of 
his  work  possible. 

Edwards's  ministry  was  marked  from  the  first;  and 
it  was  not  long  before  the  Northampton  pulpit  was 
strongly  felt  in  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  in  a 
direction  largely  counter  to  the  religious  tendencies  of 
the  time.  Taken  as  a  whole,  no  century  in  American 
religious  history  has  been  so  barren  as  the  eighteenth. 
The  fire  and  enthusiasm  of  Puritanism  had  died  out 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  In  this  country  the 
inevitable  provincialism  of  the  narrow  colonial  life,  the 
deadening  influence  of  its  hard  grapple  with  the  rude 
forces  of  nature,  and  the  Indian  and  Canadian  wars 
rendered  each  generation  less  actively  religious  than 
its  predecessor;  and,  while  New  England  shone  as 
compared  with  the  spiritual  deadness  of  Old  England 
in  the  years  preceding  Wesley,  the  old  fervor  and 
sense  of  a  national  mission  were  gone,  conscious  con- 
version, once  so  common,  was  unusual,  and  religion 
was  becoming  more  formal  and  external. 

Then,  too,  it  seems  to  be  the  law  of  the  develop- 
ment of  a  declining  Calvinism  everywhere,  whether  in 
Switzerland,  France,  Holland,  England,  or  America, 
that  it  passes  through  three  or  four  stages.  Beginning 

1  Died  October  2,  1758. 


230  JON  A  THA  N  ED  WA  RDS 

with  an  intense  assertion  of  divine  sovereignty  and 
human  inability,  it  ascribes  all  to  the  grace  of  God,  a 
grace  granting  common  mercies  to  all  men,  and  special 
salvatory  mercy  to  the  elect.  This  special  grace  has  its 
evident  illustrations  in  struggling  spiritual  births,  lives 
of  high  consecration,  and  conscious  regeneration.  In 
seasons  of  intense  spiritual  feeling,  like  the  Reforma- 
tion or  the  Puritan  struggle  in  England,  it  is  easy  to 
ascribe  all  religious  life  to  the  special,  selective,  irresist- 
ible, transforming  power  of  God.  But,  in  time,  the 
high  pressure  of  the  spiritual  life  of  a  community 
or  of  a  nation,  which  has  passed  through  such  a  cri- 
sis-experience as  had  the  founders  of  New  England, 
abates.  Men  desirous  of  serving  God  do  not  feel  so 
evidently  the  conscious  workings  of  the  divine  Spirit, 
and  they  ask  what  they  can  do?  not  indeed  to  save 
themselves,  —  this  second  stage  of  Calvinism  with 
no  less  emphasis  than  the  first  asserts  that  God 
alone  can  accomplish  salvation  by  special  grace, —  but 
what  they  caji^do^toj^ut^  themselves  in  a  position 
where  God  is  more  likely  to  save  them.  And  the 
/  answer  from  the  pulpit  and  in  Christian  thought 
is  an  increased  emphasis  on  the  habitual  practice  of 
prayer,  faithful  attendance  at  church,  and  the  read- 
ing of  God's  Word,  not  as  of  themselves  salvatory  but 
as  '*  means"  by  which  a  man  can  put  himself  in  a 
more'"|$robable  way  of  salvation.  From  this  the  patnj 
to  the  third  stage  is  easy;  to  the  belief  that  religion  is/ 


' 


JON  A  THA  N  EDWARDS  2$l 

a  habit  of  careful  attention  to  the  duties  of  the  house 
of  God  and  observance  of  the  precepts  of  the  Gospel 
in  relation  to  one's  neighbors — a  habit  possible  of 
attainment  by  all  inea^  and  [ustifvirig^  the  confidence 
that  though  men  cannot  render  an  adequate  service  to 
God,  yet  if  each  man  labors  sincerely  to  do  what  he 
can  under  the  impulse  of  the  grace  that  God  sends  to 
all  men  God  will  accept  his  sincere  though  imperfect 
obedience  as  satisfactory.  This  stage  was  known  in 
Edwards's  day  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  as  "  Ar- 
minianism,"  and  it  was  accompanied  by  an  unstrenuous 
or  negative  attitude  toward  the  doctrines  which  the 
first  stage  of  Calvinism  had  made  chief.  From  this 
position  it  was  an  easy  transition  for  some  to  the  fourth 
stage,  in  which  the  essence  of  the  Christian  life  is  made 
tQ_consist  in  the*pracjice  ot  morality,  arid  the"needjof 

man  is  repre^ehlea  toH^e  education  and  culture,  not 

»»— -      .     .  ~ 

rescue  and  fundamental  transformation.  [English  Puri- 
tanism had  reached  the  fourth  stage  in  some  of  its  rep- 
resentatives when  Edwards  began  his  ministry ;  New 
England  had  not  gone  farther  than  the  third  as  yet, 
and  was  chiefly  in  the  second;  but  an  "  Arminian  " 
point  of  view  was  rapidly  spreading,  even  among 
those  who  would  warmly  have  resented  classification 
as  "  Arminians."  Rev.  Samuel  Phillips  of  Andover, 
who  was  certainly  thought  a  Calvinist,  thus  expressed 
a  prevalent  feeling  in  1738  : ' 

1  Orthodox  Christian,  p.  75.     1738. 


232  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

"  I  can't  suppose,  that  any  one  .  .  .  who  at  all 
Times,  faithfully  improves  the  common  Grace  he  has,  that  is 
to  say,  is  diligent  in  attending  on  the  appointed  Means  of 
Grace  with  a  Desire  to  profit  thereby;  .  .  .  and  in  a 
Word,  who  walks  up  to  his  Light,  to  the  utmost  of  his 
Power,  shall  perish  for  want  of  special  and  saving  Grace." 

Now  it  was  Edwards's  great  work  as  a  religious 
leader  to  be  the  chief  human  instrument  in  turning 
back  the  current  for  over  a  century  in  the  larger  part 
of  New  England  to  the  theory  of  the  method  of  salva- 
tion and  of  man's  dependence  on  God  which  marked 
the  earlier  types  of  Calvinism.  Yet  it  was  not  wholly 
a  return.  While  he  emphasized  the  arbitrary  and 
absolute  character  of  the  divine  election  as  positively 
as  the  older  Calvinists,  and  even  more  strenuously  as- 
serted the  immediacy  of  the  divine  operations  in  deal- 
ing with  the  human  soul,  he  tried  to  find  place  for  a  real 
and  still  existent,  if  unused  and  unusable,  natural  hu- 
man power  to  turn  to  God,  and  hence  a  present,  as  well 
as  an  Adamic  and  racial,  responsibility  for  not  so  doing. 

Edwards's  stimulating  preaching  soon  had  a  marked 
effect  on  the  little  Northampton  community  of  two 
hundred  families.1  The  town  was  not  unfamiliar  with 
religious  quickenings.  At  least  five  had  occurred 
under  the  able  ministry  of  Solomon  Stoddard.  But 
Edwards's  sermons  were  on  themes  calculated  to  stir  a 

1  Edwards  gave  a  full  account  of  these  events  in  his  Narrative  of 
Surprising  Conversions  (1736-37)  in  Works,  ed.  Worcester,  1808-09, 
iii.,  pp.  9-62,  from  which  the  statements  in  this  paragraph  are  taken. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  233 

community,  and  especially  an  isolated  rural  community. 
Two  sudden  deaths  in  the  spring  of  1734  excited  the 
concern  of  the  little  town — a  concern  which  was  deep- 
ened by  a  vague  alarm  lest  the  spreading  Arminian- 
ism  which  the  Northampton  pulpit  denounced  was  a 
token  of  the  withdrawal  of  God's  redemptive  mercy 
from  sinful  men.  And  the  preacher  set  forth,  in  ser- 
mons which  read  with  power  after  a  lapse  of  more  than 
a  hundred  and  sixty  years,  the  complete  right  of  God 
to  deal  with  his  creatures  as  he  saw  fit,  the  enmity  of 
human  hearts  against  God,  the  terrors  of  the  world  to 
come,  and  the  blessedness  of  acceptance  with  God. 
"  I  have  found,"  said  Edwards,  "  that  no  sermons 
have  been  more  remarkably  blessed,  than  those  in 
which  the  doctrine  of  God's  absolute  sovereignty  with 
regard  to  the  salvation  of  sinners,  and  his  just  liberty 
with  regard  to  answering  the  prayers  or  succeeding 
the  pains  of  mere  natural  men,  continuing  such,  have 
been  insisted  on."  By  December,  1734,  a  movement 
of  spiritual  power  was  manifest  in  the  community 
which  resulted  in  six  months'  time  in  "  more  than 
three  hundred  "  conversions.  The  experience  of  those 
wrought  upon,  in  large  measure,  corresponded  to  the 
type  of  preaching  to  which  they  had  listened ;  and  Ed- 
wards describes  it  as  normally  involving  three  definite 
stages.  Of  these  the  first  was  an  "  awful  appre- 
hension "  of  the  condition  in  which  men  stand  by 
nature,  so  overwhelming  as  to  produce  oftentimes 


234  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

painful  physical  effects.  Next  followed,  in  cases  which 
Edwards  believed  to  be  the  genuine  work  of  the  Spirit 
of  God,  a  conviction  that  they  justly  deserved  the 
divine  wrath,  not  infrequently  leading  to  expressions 
of  wonder  that  "  God  has  not  cast  them  into  hell 
long  ago."  And  from  this  valley  of  humiliation 

<the  converts  emerged,  often  suddenly,  into  "  a  holy 
repose  of  soul  in  God  through  Christ,  and  a  secret 
disposition  to  fear  and  love  him,  and  to  hope  for 
/blessings  from  him,"  and  into  such  "  a  sense  of  the 
greatness  of  his  grace  "  as  to  lead,  in  many  instances, 
to  laughter,  tears,  or  even  to  a  "  sinking"  of  the 
physical  frame,  as  if  the  inward  vision  of  God's  glory 
were  too  much  for  mortal  spirits  to  endure. 

This  type  of  Christian  experience  is  foreign  to  the 
altered  and  unemotional  age  in  which  we  live,  but  it 
was  not  peculiar  to  Edwards's  congregation.  The 
Puritan  founders  of  New  England  had  entered  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  by  the  same  door;  and  one  finds 
in  the  sermons  of  Hooker  or  of  Shepard  the  same 
analysis  of  the  inmost  feelings  of  the  sinful  human 
heart,  the  same  sense  of  the  exceeding  difficulty  and 
relative  infrequency  of  salvation,  and  the  same  con- 
sciousness of  desert  of  the  divine  wrath.  It  was  to 
appear  again  not  merely  in  the  "  Great  Awakening" 
of  1740-42,  but  in  the  remarkable  series  of  revivals 
which,  beginning  in  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  lasted  nearly  to  the  Civil  War.  But  in 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  235 

Edwards's  sermons  the  view  of  conversion  of  which  this 
experience  is  the  normal  accompaniment  is  put  with  a 
relentlessness  of  logic  and  a  fertility  of  imagination  that 
have  never  been  surpassed.  We  trace  his  steps  as  he 
argues,  in  terms  in  which  no  parent  would  estimate 
the  misdeeds  of  his  child,  that  sin  is  infinite  in  its  guilt 
because  committed  against  an  infinite  object.1  We 
follow  his  reasoning  with  a  recoil  that  amounts  to  in- 
credulity that  such  is  the  latent  hatred  of  the  unre- 
generate  human  mind  that  it  would  kill  God  if  it 
could.2  We  revolt  as  we  read  Edwards's  contention 
that  the  wicked  are  useful  simply  as  objects  of  the  de- 
structive wrath  of  God  ; 3  as  he  beholds  the  unconverted 
members  of  the  congregation  before  him  withheld  for 
a  brief  period  by  the  restraining  hand  of  God  from  the 
hell  into  which  they  are  to  fall  in  their  appointed 
time;4  as  he  pictures  the  damned  glow  in  endless 
burning  agony  like  a  spider  in  the  flame; 5  and  height- 
ens the  happiness  of  the  redeemed  by  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  felicities  of  heaven  and  the  eternal  torments 
of  the  lost,  visible  forever  to  the  saints  in  glory.8  No 
wonder  one  of  his  congregation  was  led  to  suicide  and 
others  felt  themselves  grievously  tempted.7 

1  Sermon  on  Romans  iv.,  5,  Works,  vii.,  pp.  27,  28. 

2  Ibid,  v.,  10,   Works,  vii.,  pp.  168,  175. 

3  Sermon  on  Ezekiel  xv.,  2-4,  Works,  viii.,  pp.  129-150. 

4  Sermon  on  Deuteronomy  xxxii.,  35,  Works,  vii., pp.  487,  491,  496,  502. 

6  Sermon  on  Ezekiel  xxii.,  14,  Works,  vii.,  p.   393. 
*  Ibid.,  xv.,  2-4,  Works,  viii.,  pp.  141-143. 

7  Narrative  of  Surprising  Conversions,  Works,  iii.,  pp.  77,  78. 


236  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

Repulsive  as  this  presentation  is,  it  is  but  fair  to 
Edwards  to  remember  that  it  seerned  to  him  to  be 
demanded  no  less  by  his  philosophic  principles  than 
by  his  interpretation  of  the  Bible.  And  it  is  merely 
justice  to  recall,  also,  that  though  the  terrors  of  the 
law  fill  a  large  place  in  his  pulpit  utterances,  no  man 
of  his  age  pictured  more  glowingly  than  Edwards  the 
joys  of  the  redeemed,1  the  blessedness  of  union  with 
Christ,  or  the  felicities  of  the  knowledge  of  God. 
When  all  deductions  have  been  made  from  his  pre- 
sentation of  Christian  truth — and  much  must  be  made 
— he  remains  a  preacher  such  as  few  have  been  of  the 
eternal  verities  of  sin,  redemption,  holiness,  judgment, 
and  enjoyment  of  God. 

It  is  evidence  that  this  awakening  at  Northampton 
was  not  the  effect  of  Edwards's  preaching  alone,  that 
a  similar  stirring  took  place  within  a  few  months 
throughout  that  section  of  Massachusetts  and  in  a 
number  of  towns  of  Connecticut. a  The  news  of  this 
then  unusual  work  drew  attention  to  the  young  North- 
ampton minister,  not  only  from  all  parts  of  New  Eng- 
land but  from  across  the  Atlantic.  His  sermons  and 
methods  brought  some  enemies,  but  many  friends; 
and,  at  the  request  of  the  Rev.  Drs.  Isaac  Watts 
and  John  Guyse,  the  leading  Congregational  ministers 
of  England,  Edwards  prepared,  and  these  ministers 

1  E.  g.,  his  sermon  on  John  xiv.,  27,  Works,  viii.,  pp.  230-247. 
^  Narrative  of  Surprising  Conversions,  Works,  iii.,  pp.  77,  78. 


JON  A  THA  N  EDWARDS  237 

published  at  London,  in  1737,  an  extended  account  of 
the  revival.1 

Known  thus  far  and  wide  as  one  whose  ministry 
had  been  signally  distinguished  by  dramatic  manifesta- 
tions of  spiritual  power,  it  was  natural  that  when  the 
coming  of  Whitefield  to  the  Congregational  colonies, 
in  the  autumn  of  1740,  gave  the  human  impetus  to  the 
marvellous  religious  overturning  known  as  the  "  Great 
Awakening,"  Edwards  should  be  regarded  as  the  best 
American  representative  of  the  revival  spirit  which 
then  had  its  most  extensive  manifestation.  The  story 
of  that  momentous  stirring  will  be  told  in  the  next  lec- 
ture more  fully  than  our  time  will  permit  to-day.  To 
Edwards  it  seemed  at  first  the  very  dawning  of  the  mil- 
lennial age,  and  the  visible  manifestation  of  the  divine 
glory.2  It  appeared  but  the  repetition,  not  merely  in 
Edwards's  own  parish,  but  on  a  scale  coextensive 
with  the  American  colonies,  of  the  revival  of  his  early 
ministry.  He  welcomed  the  youthful  Whitefield  to 
his  pulpit;  who,  in  turn,  recorded  an  approval  of  the 
occupants  of  the  Northampton  parsonage  in  the  words : 
'  He  is  a  Son  himself,  and  hath  also  a  Daughter  of 
Abraham  for  his  wife  "  ;  and  said  of  Edwards,  "  I  think 

1  A  Faithful  Narrative  of  the  Surprizing  Work  of  God  in  the  Conver- 
sion of  Many  Hundred  Souls  in  Northampton  and  the  Neighbouring 
Towns,  London,  1737.     Generally  known  as  the  Narrative  of  Surpris- 
ing Conversions.     A  briefer  account  by  Edwards  had  been  published  at 
Boston  late  in  1736. 

2  Some  Thoughts  Concerning  the  Present  Revival  of  Religion  in  New 
England,  pp.  96-103.     Boston,   1742. 


238  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

I  have  not  seen  his  Fellow  in  all  New  England." 
Edwards  himself  preached  as  an  evangelist  in  many 
pulpits  besides  his  own.  And  when  criticism  arose  and 
waxed  to  denunciation  in  many  quarters  as  the  more 
radical  elements  of  the  movement  ran  their  violent 
and  divisive  course,  he  defended  the  revival  as  a  true 
work  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  which  every  Christian  ought 
to  favor  to  the  utmost  of  his  power,  while  deprecating 
the  excesses  of  many  of  the  exhorters,  in  his  treatise 
of  1742,  entitled  Some  Thoughts  Concerning  the  Present 
Revival  of  Religion  in  Neiv  England. 

But  though  Edwards  distrusted,  in  this  volume,  the 
weight  laid  by  many  of  the  friends  of  the  revival  on 
the  bodily  effects  which  so  frequently  accompanied  the 
preaching  of  Whitefield,  Tennent,  Parsons,  Bellamy,  or 
his  own,  he  nevertheless  insisted  that  they  were  often- 
times a  real  product  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  he  cites 
in  proof  an  experience  of  his  wife  begun  probably  near 
the  close  of  1738  and  reaching  its  culmination  in  the 
revival  scenes  of  1742.  In  so  doing  he  gave  a  part  of 
one  of  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  mystic  biog- 
raphy anywhere  recorded3 — the  complement  to  it 
being  contained  in  Mrs.  Edwards's  own  account  pub- 
lished by  Dr.  Dwight.3  It  is  one  which  shows  how 
Edward's  thought  had  in  it  the  germ  of  a  develop- 
ment of  his  theology  fully  reached  by  his  disciples  as 

1  Whitefield's  Seventh  Journal,  pp.  47,  48. 

*  Thoughts,  pp.  62-78.  3  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  171-186. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  239 

to  the  extent  to  which  a  Christian  must  be  cordially 
submissive  to  the  divine  disposal.  Edwards  did,  in- 
deed, deprecate  the  statements  of  converts  that  they 
were  willing  to  be  damned,  if  God  so  chose.  '  They 
had  not  clear  and  distinct  ideas  of  damnation,"  he  says; 
"  nor  does  any  word  in  the  Bible  require  such  self- 
denial  as  this."  '  And  he  also  held  that  an  impenitent 
man  might  rightfully  pray  for  God's  mercy.2  But  Ed- 
wards taught  that  the  essence  of  virtue  is  the  preference 
of  the  glory  of  God  to  any  personal  interests.  And 
the  burden  of  Mrs.  Edwards's  struggle  was  this  crucial 
problem  of  submission.  It  is  illustrative  of  the  wifely 
devotion  of  this  remarkable  woman  that  the  very  crises 
of  her  trial  were  her  willingness  to  endure,  if  necessary, 
the  disapproval  of  her  husband,  and  to  see  another  more 
successful  than  he  in  his  Northampton  pulpit,  if  God 
so  desired.  After  these  battles  had  been  won,  it  was 
easy  to  go  on  to  a  sense  of  readiness  to  "  die  on  the 
rack,  or  at  the  stake,"  or  "  in  horror  "  of  soul,  rising 
at  last  to  a  willingness  to  suffer  the  torments  of  hell  in 
body  and  soul  "if  it  be  most  for  the  honour  of  God." 

These  experiences  were  accompanied  not  once,  but 
repeatedly  by  such  a  sense  of  the  divine  glory  that 4 

1  Narrative  of  Surprising  Conversions,   Works,  iii.,  p.  37. 

3  Letter  of  1741,  in  Dwight,  Life,  p.  150:  "There  are  very  few 
requests  that  are  proper  for  an  impenitent  man,  that  are  not  also,  in 
some  sense,  proper  for  the  godly." 

3  Dwight,  Life,  p.  182. 

4  Thoughts,  pp.  63,  76. 


240  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

"  the  Strength  of  the  Body  [was]  taken  away,  so  as  to  de- 
prive of  all  Ability  to  stand  or  speak;  sometimes  the  Hands 
clinch'd,  and  the  Flesh  cold,  but  Senses  still  remaining  "; 

and  the  result  was 

"  all  former  Troubles  and  Sorrows  of  Life  forgotten,  and 
all  Sorrow  and  Sighing  fled  away,  excepting  Grief  for  past 
Sins,  and  for  remaining  Corruption  ...  a  daily  sen- 
sible doing  and  suffering  every  Thing  for  GOD, 
eating  for  GOD,  and  working  for  GOD,  and  sleeping  for 
GOD,  and  bearing  Pain  and  Trouble  for  GOD,  and  doing 
all  as  the  Service  of  Love." 

What  shall  we  say  to  these  things  ?  Not  that  they 
are  not  the  real  experiences  of  sensible  men  and 
women,  in  a  period  of  high-wrought  religious  feeling. 
They  are;  or  we  must  deny  the  Christian  conscious- 
ness of  Paul,  of  Bernhard,  of  Francis.  But  they  are 
not  the  experiences  of  the  normal  religious  life,  and  to 
insist  on  them  as  such  is  to  make  a  great  mistake. 

And  Edwards  also  came  to  feel  that  it  was  in  some 
sense  a  mistake.  When  the  "  Great  Awakening  "  was 
over,  he  published,  in  the  light  of  that  tremendous 
wave  of  excitement  and  its  disappointing  results,  his 
noblest  purely  religious  exposition,  the  Treatise  Con- 
cerning Religious  Affections,  of  1746.  None  but  a  man 
of  remarkable  poise  of  judgment  could  have  written  it. 
It  betrays  no  reaction  against  the  movement  which 
had  so  come  short  of  what  he  hoped.  It  sees  the 
good  and  the  bad  in  it ;  and,  rising  above  the  temporary 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  24! 

occasion,  seeks  to  answer  the  question,  "  What  is  the 
Nature  of  True  Religion  ?  "  1 

Edwards,2  unlike  modern  psychologists,  divided  the 
soul  into  two  "  faculties,"  understanding  and  affec- 
tions— the  latter  including,  but  not  separating,  the  will 
and  the  inclinations.  Each  faculty  is  the  realm  of  re- 
ligion, but  that  of  the  affections  most  of  all — that  is  to 
say,  no  religion  can  be  genuine  which  remains  merely 
a  matter  of  intellectual  knowledge  of  truth  without 
prompting  to  acts  of  will  and  outgoings  of  emotion. 

But  to  be  moved  by  strong  emotions,  Edwards 
perceived,  is  not  necessarily  to  be  religious.  This 
was  the  mistake  that  many  had  made  in  the  re- 
cent revival,  and  it  was  as  great  an  error,  Edwards 
thought,  as  the  denial  that  the  affections  had  to  do 
with  religion,  which  reaction  from  the  excesses  of  the 
revival  had  produced  in  some.  That  emotion  is 
greatly  stirred,  or  that  bodily  effects  are  produced,  are 
no  signs  that  men  are  truly  religious  —  though  Ed- 
wards here  sticks  to  his  guns  and  declares  that  to 
affirm  that  bodily  effects  are  not  of  themselves  evi- 
dences of  religion  is  not  to  affirm  that  true  religious 
emotion  may  never  have  bodily  effects.  Nor  are  we 
to  trust  to  a  fluent  tongue,  a  ready  recollection  of 
Scripture,  an  "  appearance  of  love,"  a  peculiar  se- 
quence of  religious  experiences,  a  sense  of  assurance, 

1  Religious  Affections,  Preface. 

2  In  this  paragraph  I  have  tried  to  give  a  brief  synopsis  of  the  book. 

16 


242  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

a  zeal  for  attending  meetings,  or  an  ability  to  give  a 
well-sounding  account  of  an  alleged  work  of  grace,  as 
proving  a  man  a  Christian.  Rather,  true  Christian 
affections  involve  a  "  new  spiritual  sense,"  which 
comes  not  by  nature,  but  by  the  indwelling  power  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  inducing  a  new  attitude  of  the  heart 
toward  God ;  an  unselfish  love  for  divine  things  be- 
cause they  are  holy ;  a  spiritual  enlightenment  which 
leads  to  a  conviction  of  the  certainty  of  divine  truth 
and  a  humiliating  sense  of  unworthiness ;  and  a  change 
of  disposition  which  shows  itself  in  love,  meekness, 
tenderness  of  spirit,  producing  symmetry  of  character, 
increasing  longing  for  spiritual  attainments,  and  a  life 
of  Christian  conduct  in  our  relations  to  our  fellow-men. 

The  ideal  that  Edwards  held  up  is  of  exceeding 
oftiness — too  high  to  be  made,  as  he  and  his  followers 
made  it,  the  test  of  all  Christian  discipleship.  But  it 
is  a  noble  ideal  for  a  Christian  man,  and  especially  for 
a  Christian  minister,  to  hold  before  himself  as  that 
toward  the  realization  of  which  his  Christian  life  is 
striving  in  feeling  and  animating  purpose. 

It  is  as  a  personal  illustration  of  the  Religious  Affec- 
tions, I  think,  that  we  should  view  the  biographical 
edition  of  the  diary  of  his  young  friend,  David  Brain- 
erd,  the  missionary  to  the  Indians,  which  Edwards 
published  in  1749.'  Betrothed  to  Edwards's  daughter 

1  "  There  are  two  Ways  of  representing  and  recommending  true  Re- 
ligion and  Virtue  to  the  World,  which  GOD  hath  made  Use  of  :  The  one 


, 


JON  A  THAN  ED  WARDS  243 

Jerusha,  and  dying  at  Edwards's  house,  in  1747,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-nine,  Brainerd's  story  has  the  pa- 
thetic interest  always  attaching  to  frustrated  prom- 
ise; and  his  missionary  zeal  has  made  his  consecration 
a  stimulus  to  others.  But,  though  one  of  the  most 
popular  of  Edwards's  books  at  the  time  of  its  publica- 
tion, his  Life  of  Brainerd  is  a  distressing  volume  to 
read.  The  morbid,  introspective  self-examinations 
and  the  elevations  and  depressions  of  the  poor  con- 
sumptive are  but  a  sorry  illustration  at  best  of  the 
noble  ideal  of  the  full-rounded,  healthful  Christian 
life. 

Edwards  shared  with  Brainerd  what  our  generation 
looks  upon  as  the  young  sufferer's  most  winsome  trait 
—  his  missionary  sympathy;  but  opportunities  for 
manifesting  it  in  a  rural  New  England  parish  in  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  few.  One  such 
came  in  1746,  when  a  proposition  reached  New  Eng- 
land from  a  number  of  Scotch  ministers  that  Christians 
unite  in  a  "concert  of  prayer  for  the  coming  of  our 
Lord's  kingdom"  throughout  the  earth.1  Edwards 
welcomed  it  eagerly,  and,  in  1747,  published  an  ex- 
tensive treatise  in  furtherance  of  the  suggestion."  In 

is  by  Doctrine  and  Precept  ;  the  other  is  by  Instance  and  Example." — 
An  Account  of  the  Life  of  the  late  Reverend  .Mr,  David  Brainerd, 
Preface.  Boston,  1749. 

1  Works,  iii.,  pp.  370-372. 

2  An  Humble  Attempt  to  promote  Explicit  Agreement  and  Visible  Union 
of  Goal's  People  in  Extraordinary  Prayer  for  the  Revival  of  Religion  and 
the  Advancement  of  Chris?  s  Kingdom  on  Earth.     Boston,  1747. 


244  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

the  course  of  this  essay  he  took  occasion  not  only  to 
urge  the  desirability  of  united  prayer  and  to  answer 
some  objections  to  union  which  seem  rather  absurd  to 
our  age,  though  they  were  then  regarded  as  real  diffi- 
culties, but  to  set  forth  his  interpretation  of  prophecy 
and  his  ardent  hope  for  the  speedy  coming  of  a  brighter 
religious  day. 

Edwards's  own  personal  trials  were  thickening  in 
the  years  following  the  revival  at  which  we  have  just 
been  glancing.  Some  of  the  causes  of  growing  es- 
trangement between  him  and  his  Northampton  people 
are  patent  enough  ;  some  are  obscure.  Two  are  dis- 
tinctly in  evidence.  The  first  was  a  case  of  discipline, 
apparently  of  the  year  1744,  wherein  proceedings 
against  a  number  of  young  people  in  his  congregation 
for  circulating  what  he  deemed,  doubtless  truly,  im- 
pure books,  were  so  managed  or  mismanaged,  as  to 
alienate  from  him  nearly  all  the  young  people  of  the 
town.1 

The  other  evident  cause  was  the  controversy  over 
the  terms  of  church  membership,  which  was  the  osten- 
sible ground  of  his  dismission.2  In  a  former  lecture 
some  account  was  given  of  the  rise  of  the  '*  Half- 
Way  Covenant"  —that  system  approved  by  the  sec- 
ond generation  on  New  England  soil,  by  which  the 

1  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  299,  300. 

2  Dwight  gives  a  full  and  documentary  account  of  this  controversy, 
ibid.,  pp.  300-448. 


JON  A  THAN  ED  WARDS  245 

children  of  church  members,  though  themselves  not 
consciously  regenerate,  were  admitted  to  sufficient 
standing  in  the  church  to  bring  their  children  in  turn  to 
baptism,  although  themselves  barred  from  the  Lord's 
table.  Hence  the  nickname  "  Half- Way  Covenant," 
indicating  that  those  who  stood  in  this  relation  were 
members  enough  to  enjoy  the  privileges  of  the  one 
sacrament  for  their  children,  but  not  members  enough 
to  participate  in  the  other. 

This  system  became  general  in  New  England  by  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century;  but  in  some 
places  the  earlier  practice  was  yet  further  modified. 
Some  argued  that  if  earnest-minded  though  unregen- 
erate  children  of  church  members  were  themselves 
sufficiently  church  members,  by  reason  of  the  divine 
promise,  "to  be  a  God  unto  thee,  and  to  thy  seed 
after  thee,"  '  to  bring  their  children  in  turn  to  bap- 
tism, they  were  sufficiently  members  to  come  to  the 
Lord's  Supper.  Indeed,  it  was  their  duty  to  come 
thither,  if  sincerely  desirous  of  leading  a  Christian  life, 
for  they  would  find  the  communion,  like  prayer  and 
public  worship,  a  means  tending  to  conversion.  This 
view  was  made  popular  in  the  upper  Connecticut  val- 
ley by  the  great  influence  of  Edwards's  grandfather 
and  predecessor,  Solomon  Stoddard.  Held  by  him 
as  early  as  1679,  he  did  not  introduce  the  practice 
into  the  Northampton  church  till  after  1700;  but  it 

1  Genesis  xvii.,  7- 


246  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

soon  after  became  the  custom  in  that  church  and  in 
most  of  its  immediate  neighbors.1  Edwards  was 
settled  under  it  and  practiced  it  for  nearly  twenty 
years. 

Edwards's  own  lofty  conceptions  of  the  Christian 
life  and  his  emphasis  on  conversion  as  its  beginning 
led  him  gradually,  however,  to  the  conclusion  that  no 
church  privileges  should  be  given  to  those  not  con- 
scious, in  some  degree,  of  a  work  of  the  Spirit  of  God 
in  their  own  souls.  He  intimated  this  change  of  view 
in  his  Religious  Affections  of  1746;*  but  it  illustrates 
the  spiritual  torpor  that  followed  the  fever  of  the 
"  Great  Awakening,"  and  possibly  the  alienation  be- 
tween Edwards  and  his  young  people,  that  he  waited 
from  1744  to  December,  1748,  for  a  single  candidate 
for  church  membership  to  come  forward  even  under 
the  easy  terms  of  the  Northampton  church.  When 
an  applicant  at  last  appeared  he  made  known  his 
change  of  opinion,  and  intended  change  of  practice, 
temperately  and  moderately.  There  was,  indeed,  a 
good  deal  to  be  said  against  such  a  modification  as  the 
pastor  proposed.  His  honored  grandfather  had  in- 
troduced the  existing  system ;  he  had  been  settled, 
well  knowing  what  it  was;  he  had  practiced  it.  It 
might  be  urged  that  it  was  a  breach  of  contract  for 

1  Some  account  may  be  found  in  Walker's  Creeds  and  Platforms,  pp. 
279-282. 

2  Edwards's  own  statement,  in  Dwight,  Life,  p.  314. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  247 

him  to  abandon  it.  But,  even  granting  this,  one 
hardly  understands  the  virulence  of  the  opposition 
which  Edwards  encountered  from  those  who  must 
almost  all  have  been  his  spiritual  children.  One 
hardly  sees  sufficient  ground  for  the  hostility  that  led 
to  charges  that  Edwards  planned  a  Separatist  con- 
gregation ;  that  refused  to  hear  his  arguments;  that 
sought  to  induce  prominent  ministers  to  answer  the 
admirable  book  which  he  published  in  1749  in  defense 
of  his  position ; '  that  appears  in  the  long  wrangle  over 
the  composition  of  the  council  which  should  consider 
his  further  relations  to  the  Northampton  congrega- 
tion; or  in  the  bitter  enmity  of  some  of  his  kinsfolk  in 
and  out  of  the  ministry  of  the  county.  £dwardsjhim- 
self  once  declared  that  he  had  little  skill  in  conversa- 
tion; "  he  was  thought  by  some  .  .  .  to  be  stiff 
and  unsociable  "  ;  he  held  himself  aloof  from  pastoral 


calling  save  in  cases  of  real  need ; 2  and  one  can  but 
suspect  that  he  lacked  the  art  of  leading  men.  Honest 
and  conscientious  to  the  core — in  this  change  of  prac- 
tice, as  in  the  case  of  discipline,  he  seems  to  have 
taken  none  of  the  preparatory  measures  which  often 
make  all  the  difference  between  success  and  failure  in 
swaying  a  democratic  body.  Stoddard  had  certainly- 
held  his  peculiar  views  for  nearly  thirty  years  before 

1  An  Humble  Inquiry  into  the  Rules  of  the  Word  of  God,  concerning 
the  Qualifications  Reqtdsite  to  a  compleat  Standing  and  full  Communion 
in  the  Visible  Christian  Church.     Boston,  1749. 

2  Hopkins,  Life,  pp.  44-46,  54. 


248  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

they  became  the  practice  of  his  congregation,  but 
such  careful  nurturing  of  a  desired  measure  was  ap- 
parently foreign  to  Edwards's  nature.  That^he  mat- 
ter was  intellectually  clear  to  him  was  sufficient;  it 
ought  to  be  so  to  others. 

But,  however  explainable,  the  fact  remains  that  in 
this  crisis  Edwards  had  the  support  of  no  considerable 
portion  of  his  congregation,  nor  did  the  strong  sense 
of  professional  unity  characteristic  of  the  clergy  of  the 
eighteenth  century  prevent  a  majority  of  his  neighbor- 
ing ministers  from  opposing  him.  A  council  of  nine 
churches  met  on  June  19,  1750. '  That  advisory  body 
having  decided  that  Edwards's  dismission  was  neces- 
sary if  his  people  still  desired  it,  the  Northampton 
church  voted  by  more  than  two  hundred  to  twenty- 
three  to  dismiss  its  pastor.  That  action  the  council 
approved  by  a  majority  of  one  on  June  22d.  And 
the  town  added  what  was  an  insult  to  the  burdens  of 
the  deposed  pastor  by  voting,  probabty  in  November, 
1750,  that  Edwards  should  not  preach  in  the  commun- 
ity. It  is  interesting  to  note  that  one,  at  least,  of 
those  of  Edwards's  congregation  prominent  in  procur- 
ing his  removal,  and  esteemed  by  the  Northampton 
pastor  his  most  energetic  opponent,  Joseph  Hawley, 
Edwards's  cousin,  and  a  leading  lawyer  and  politician, 

1  Dwight  gives  the  documents,  Life,  pp.  398-403  ;  Edwards  wrote  a 
most  interesting  account  in  letters  of  July  5,  1750,  to  Erskine,  and  of 
July  i,  1751,  to  Gillespie,  Dwight,  ibid.,  pp.  405-413,  462-468. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  249 

afterward  not  only  privately  but  publicly  avowed  his 
regret  and  repentance  for  what  had  been  done.1  And 
Edwards's  contention  in  the  principal  subject  of  this 
controversy  was  not  without  abundant  ultimate  fruit- 
age. His  friends,  notably  his  pupil,  Rev.  Dr.  Joseph 
Bellamy,  carried  forward  his  attack  on  Stoddardeanism 
and  the  Half- Way  Covenant,  with  the  result  that,  by 
the  first  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  Ed- 
wards had  been  fifty  years  in  his  grave,  the  system 
had  been  generally  set  aside  by  the  Congregational 
churches. 

Turned  out  from  his  pastorate  thus,  at  the  age  of 
forty-seven,  with  a  family  of  ten  living  children,2 
he  had  to  look  about  for  a  new  charge.  His 
friend,  Rev.  Dr.  John  Erskine,  suggested  a  settle- 
ment in  Scotland,  where  Erskine  was  a  leader  in  the 
Church;3  the  people  of  Canaan,  Conn.,  heard  him 
with  approval ;  *  but  the  place  of  his  next  seven-years' 
sojourn  was  determined  by  a  two-fold  call  that  came  to 
him  through  the  efforts  of  his  friend  and  pupil,  Samuel 
Hopkins,  in  December,  1750,  from  the  church  in  the 
little  frontier  village  of  Stockbridge  to  become  its  min- 
ister, and  from  the  English  "Society  for  the  Propaga- 

1  Letter  of  May  9,  1760,  D wight,  ibid.,  pp.  421-427.     See  Edwards's 
characterization  of  him,  ibid.,  pp.  410,  411. 

2  Two  daughters,  however,   were  married  in  the  year  of  Edwards's 
dismission. 

3  Edwards's  letter  of  July  5,  1750,  Dwight,  Life,  p.  412. 

4  Dexter,  Biographical  Sketches  of  the  Graduates  of  Yale  College,  i. , 
pp.  219,  220. 


250  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

tion  of  the  Gospel  in  New  England/'  which  had  grown 
out  of  Eliot's  labors  a  century  before,  to  become  its 
missionary  to  the  Housatonic  Indians  at  the  same  place.1 
Thither  he  and  his  household  removed  in  the  summer 
of  1751.  But  Stockbridge  was  not  without  its  serious 
controversies  between  the  new  pastor  and  missionary 
and  those  who  were  exploiting  the  Indians  for  pecun- 
iary advantage ;  and  the  chief  of  his  new  foes  was  a 
relative  of  some  of  his  leading  opponents  in  the  North- 
ampton separation.  These  disputes  distressed  the 
first  years  of  his  new  settlement,  but  Edwards's  posi- 
tion was  so  manifestly  just  that,  with  the  support  of 
the  Commissioners  whose  missionary  agent  he  was, 
victory  and  peace  came  to  him.8 

Edwards  doubtless  conscientiously  fulfilled  his  stipu- 
lated duty  of  preaching  to  the  Indians  once  a  week 
through  an  interpreter,3  besides  ministering  to  the 
English-speaking  Stockbridge  congregation,  but  he 
was  too  settled  in  scholastic  ways  to  make  a  successful 
missionary.  His  own  judgment  of  himself  he  ex- 
pressed when  he  wrote  to  Erskine,  in  1750,  that  he 
was  "  fitted  for  no  other  business  but  study."  And 

1  Dwight,  Life,  p.  449  ;  see  also  Hopkins's  statement,  West,  Sketches 
of  the  Life  of  the  Late  Rev.   Samuel  Hopkins,  pp.   53-57.     Hartford, 
1805. 

2  For  some  aspects  of  this  controversy,  see  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  450-541. 

3  There  is  an  outline  of  one  of  these  sermons  in  Grosart,  Selections 
from  the  Unpublished  Writings  of  Jonathan  Edwards,   pp.   191-196. 
Privately  printed  (Edinburgh),  1865. 

4  Dwight,  Life,  p.  412. 


JON  A  THAN  ED  WARDS  2$  I 

at  Stockbridge  opportunity  came  to  him,  even  amid 
the  distractions  of  the  great  military  struggle  between 
France  and  England  in  which  little  Stockbridge  was  at 
times  a  turmoiled  frontier  outpost,1  for  studies  which 
produced  the  four  treatises  by  which  he  is  best  known 
—his  Careful  and  Strict  Enquiry  into  the  modern  pre- 
vailing Notions  of  Freedom  of  Will?  his  End  for  which 
God  created  the  World,  his  Nature  of  True  Virtue?  and 
his  Great  Christian  Doctrine  of  Original  Sin  defended* 
This  is  not  the  time  and  place,  even  if  the  lecturer 
possessed  the  ability,  to  enter  on  any  thorough  criti- 
cism, or  even  on  any  elaborate  exposition,  of  these 
works.  Viewed  simply  as  feats  of  intellectual  achieve- 
ment they  present  the  highest  reach  of  the  New  Eng- 
land mind  and  have  given  their  author  a  permanent 
place  among  the  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Were  Edwards's  writings  subtracted  from  the 
literature  of  colonial  New  England  the  residue  would 
embrace  little  more  than  the  discussions  of  a  narrow 
and  provincial  society,  aside  from  the  course  of  the 
world's  affairs.  It  was  Edwards  who  gave  to  the 
thought  of  eighteenth-century  New  England  about 
whatever  interest  and  lasting  repute  it  bears  in  other 
lands.  Edwards's  treatises  involved  no  changes  in  his 

1  Compare   Edwards's  letter  of  April    10,    1756,    to   McCulloch,  in 
D wight,  Life,  p.  555. 

2  First  edition,  Boston,  1754. 

3  These  two  treatises  were  first  published  at  Boston  in  1765. 

4  First  edition,  Boston,  1758. 


252  JON  A  THAN  ED  WARDS 

theology.     Rather  they  were  the  logical  formulation 
of  what  he  had  long  taught. 

Edwards's  volume  on  the  Will,  usually  esteemed 
his  crowning  work,  was  long  planned,1  but  was  not 
written  till  1753.  It  was  his  supreme  effort  against 
the  Arminianism  which  had  been  the  horror  of  his 
early  ministry.  Calvinism,  in  this  feature  of  its  stren- 
uous creed,  had  fallen  low.  Its  contemporary  defenders 
in  England,  like  Watts  and  Doddridge,  had  been 
compelled,  as  Edwards's  son  Jonathan  phrased  it,  to 
"bow  in  the  house  of  Rimmon,  and  admit  the  Self- 
Determining  Power  "  of  the  will.2  In  the  Discourse 
published  by  Daniel  Whitby,  rector  at  the  English 
Salisbury,  in  1710,  predestination  in  the  Calvinistic 
sense  was  widely  believed  to  have  received  its  death- 
blow; and  we  may  imagine  that  the  arguments  therein 
advanced  had  often  been  pressed  upon  Edwards's 
attention  by  his  keen  -  minded  kinsman  and  oppo- 
nent in  Northampton,  Joseph  Hawley,  when  the  latter 
was  a  student  in  his  household.3  But  whatever  of 
local  and  personal  interest  there  may  have  been  for 
Edwards  in  the  theme,  the  general  defense  of  what  he 
deemed  the  truth  against  widely  prevalent  error  was 
motive  enough  to  rouse  a  man  of  his  temperament  to 
utmost  endeavor. 

1  Dwight,  Life,  p.  507. 

2  "  Improvements  in  Theology,"  ibid.,  p.  614. 
8  Ibid.,  pp.  410,  411. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  2$ 3 

To  Edwards's  thinking,1  human  freedom  signifies  no 
more  than  a  natural  power  to  act  in  accordance  with 
the  choice  of  the  mind.  With  the  origin  of  that 
choice  the  will  has  nothing  to  do.  Man  is  free  to  do 
as  he  chooses,  but  not  free  to  determine  in  what  direc- 
tion his  choice  shall  lie.  His  will  always  moves,  and 
moves  freely,  in  the  line  of  his  strongest  inclination, 
but  what  that  inclination  will  be  depends  on  what  man 
deems  his  highest  good.  While  man  has  full  natural 
power  to  serve  God, —  that  is,  could  freely  follow  a 
choice  to  serve  God  if  he  had  such  an  inclination, — he 
will  not  serve  God  till  God  reveals  himself  to  man  as 
his  highest  good  and  thus  renders  obedience  to  God 
man's  strongest  motive.  Moral  responsibility  lies  in 
his  choice,  not  in  the  cause  of  the  choice;  and  hence  a 
man  of  evil  inclination  deserves  condemnation,  since 
each  choice  is  his  own  act,  even  though  the  direction 
in  which  the  choices  are  exercised  is  not  in  his  control. 
Man  cannot  choose  between  various  choices,  nor  can 
his  choice  originate  without  some  impelling  cause  ex- 
ternal to  the  will;  but  his  will  acts  in  the  direction  in 
which  he  desires  to  move,  and  is  free  in  the  sense  that 
it  is  not  forced  to  act  counter  to  its  inclination. 

In  this  treatise  Edwards  took  up  conceptions  essen- 
tially resembling  those  advanced  by  Hobbes,  Locke, 

1  In  describing  Edwards's  books  I  have  borrowed  some  sentences  from 
my  History  of  the  Congregational  Churches  in  the  United  States,  pp. 
283-286.  New  York,  1894. 


254  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

and  Collins,  with  whose  religious  speculations  he  had 
no  sympathy ;  but  his  use  of  these  ideas  was  profoundly 
original.  He  appears  to  have  been  acquainted  with 
the  writings  of  Locke  only,  and  his  grasp  of  the  points 
involved  is  far  surer  than  that  of  the  English  philos- 
opher. The  volume  was,  till  comparatively  recent 
times,  in  extensive  use,  being  esteemed  by  Calvinists 
generally  an  unanswerable  critique  of  the  Arminian 
position.  It  has  met,  however,  with  growing  dissent, 
and  though  not  often  directly  opposed  of  late  years, 
is  largely  felt  to  lie  outside  the  conceptions  of  modern 
religious  thought ;  but  it  has  acceptance  still,  especially 
1  with  those  who  hold  a  necessitarian  view  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  may  be  said  never  to  have  had  a  positive 
and  complete  refutation,  though  suffering  a  constantly 
increasing  neglect. 

The  preparation  of  this  treatise  on  the  Will  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  composition  of  two  smaller  essays,  prob- 
ably in  1755  ' — that  Concerning  the  End  for  which  God 
created  the  World,  and  that  on  the  Nature  of  True 
Virtue.  Of  the  former  investigation  into  a  profound 
and  mysterious  theme  it  may  be  sufficient  to  say  that 
Edwards's  immediate  interpreters,  notably  his  son 
Jonathan,  regarded  it  as  uniting  the  two  heretofore 
supposedly  mutually  exclusive  explanations  of  the 
universe  as  created  either  for  the  happiness  of  finite 
beings  or  as  a  manifestation  of  the  glory  of  the  Creator. 

1  Dwight,  Life,  p.  542. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  255 

This  union  Edwards  would  effect  by  showing  that 
both  results  "  were  the  ultimate  end  of  the  creation," 
and  that,  far  from  being  incompatible,  "  they  are 
really  one  and  the  same  thing."  The  universe  in  its 

highest   possible    state    of  happiness  is  the   ultimate/ 

^_Y 
exhibition  of  the  divine  glory.1 

The  second  of  these  treatises, — that  on  the  Nature 
of  True  Virtue, —  though  incomplete,  expresses  in 
metaphysical  form  the  feature  of  the  teaching  of  Ed-1 
wards  that  has  probably  most  affected  New  England 
thought.  He  asserted  that  the  elemental  principle  in 
virtue  is  benevolence,  or  love  to  intelligent  being  in 
proportion  to  the  amount  of  being  which  each  per- 
sonality possesses.2  Other  things  being  equal,  the 
worth  of  each  personality  is  measured  by  the  amount 
of  being  which  it  has.  To  use  Edwards's  illustration, 
"  an  Archangel  must  be  supposed  to  have  more  exist- 
ence, and  to  be  every  way  further  removed  from 
nonentity,  than  a  worm."  And  the  benevolence 
which  constitutes  virtue  must  go  out  to  all  in  propor- 
tion to  their  value  thus  measured  in  the  scale  of  being. 
Closely  connected  with  this  benevolence  toward  being 
in  general  is  a  feeling  of  love  and  attraction  toward 
other  beings  who  are  actuated  by  a  similar  spirit  of 
benevolence.  But  any  love  for  being  less  wide  than 

1  "  Improvements  in  Theology,"  Dwight,  Life,  pp.  613,  614. 

2  Nature  of  True  Virtue,  Works,  ii.,  pp.  394-401. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  401. 


t 


2  5  6  JON  A  THA  N  ED  IV A  RD  S 

this,    or  springing    from    any    motive    narrower   than 
I!  general  benevolence  cannot  be  true  virtue. 

This  theory  profoundly  influenced  New  England 
theology.  Reduced  to  popular  thought,  it  taught 
that  selfishness  is  sin,  and  that  disinterested  love  to 
God  and  to  one's  fellow-men  is  righteousness.  It 
seemed  to  furnish  a  self-evident  demonstration  of  the 
necessity  of  a  divinely  wrought  change  of  heart.  It 
gave  a  ground  also  for  holding  that  virtue  is  identical 
in  its  nature  in  God  and  man  by  showing  that  benevo- 
lence toward  intelligent  personalities  in  proportion  to 
the  amount  of  being  that  each  possesses  leads  God,  as 
the  Infinite  Being  in  comparison  with  whom  the  rest 
of  the  universe  is  infinitesimal,  to  seek  first  his  own 
glory,  while  man,  if  actuated  by  the  same  motive  of 
general  benevolence,  seeks  first  the  glory  of  God. 
Nor  was  this  doctrine  less  effective  in  giving  a  basis 
for  philanthropy.  It  was  no  accident  that  classed 
Samuel  Hopkins,  sternest  of  the  pupils  of  Edwards, 
or  Jonathan  Edwards  the  younger,  clearest-minded 
expounder  of  the  Edwardean  system,  among  the  earli- 
est New  England  opponents  of  negro  slavery,  or  drew 
the  earliest  missionaries  of  the  American  Board  from 
Edwardean  ranks.  Like  the  treatise  on  the  Religious 
Affections,  this  essay  holds  love  to  be  the  basal  ele- 
ment in  piety;  but  in  its  banishment  of  self-interest  it 
left  room  for  the  assertion  by  some  of  Edwards's  suc- 
cessors that  no  true  benevolence  could  be  present  till 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

the  soul  was  ready  to  submit  willingly  to  any  disposi- 
tion of  itself  which  God  saw  was  for  the  best  good  of 
the  universe,  even  if  that  disposition  was  the  soul's 
damnation.  We  have  already  noted  that  though  Ed- 
wards never  asserted  this  necessity,  Mrs.  Edwards 
reached  this  degree  of  self-renunciation  in  the  revival 
of  1742. 

The  fourth  important  fruit  of  Edwards's  studies  was 
a  volume  that  was  passing  through  the  press  at  the 
time  of  his  death — that  on  Original  Sin.  Of  all  his 
works  none  is  more  ingenious  or  intellectually  acute, 
but  none  has  met  so  little  acceptance.  The  subject 
of  original  sin,  like  that  of  the  powers  of  the  will,  was 
one  on  which  the  eighteenth-century  opponents  of  the 
historic  Augustinian  view  were  widely  supposed  to 
have  got  much  the  better  of  its  defenders.  Chief 
among  these  opponents  in  popular  regard  was  John 
Taylor,  a  Presbyterian  Arian  minister  at  Norwich, 
England,  whose  Scripture  Doctrine  of  Original  Sin,  of 
1738,  argued  that  sorrow,  labor,  and  physical  death 
are  consequences  to  us  of  Adam's  transgression,  but 
we  are  in  no  sense  guilty  of  Adam's  sin,  our  rational 
powers  are  in  no  way  disabled,  nor  are  we  on  account 
of  that  sin  in  any  state  of  natural  corruption  so  as  to 
be  now  without  capacity  fully  to  serve  God. 

These  opinions  were  reflected  in  eastern  Massachu- 
setts; and,  in  1757  and  1758,  a  lively  exchange  of 

pamphlets  took  place  in  which  Rev.  Samuel  Webster 

17 


258  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

of  Salisbury  and  Rev.  Charles  Chauncy  of  Boston  at- 
tacked the  doctrine  of  original  sin,  while  Edwards's 
friend,  Rev.  Peter  Clark  of  Danvers,  and  his  pupil, 
Rev.  Joseph  Bellamy,  defended  it.  Edwards  had 
probably  written  most  of  his  volume  when  this  Ameri- 
can discussion  opened ;  but  though  he  had  Taylor 
primarily  in  mind,  it  was  doubtless  hastened  through 
the  press  in  view  of  the  debate  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic.1 

In  his  volume  on  original  sin  Edwards  argued,  with 
great  wealth  of  illustration,  the  innate  corruption  of 
mankind  at  whatever  stage  of  their  existence  from 
earliest  infancy  to  old  age,  with  proofs  drawn  from 
Scripture  and  experience.  This  corruption  amounts 
in  all,  of  whatever  age,  to  utter  ruin.  It  has  its  root 
in  Adam's  sin,  and  that  sin  is  ours,  but  not  by  any 
Augustinian  presence  of  humanity  in  Adam.2  On  the 
contrary,  Edwards  explained  our  guilt  of  that  far-off 
transgression  by  a  curious  theory  of  the  preservation 
of  personal  or  racial  continuity — a  theory  drawn  in 
part  from  Locke's  speculations  on  Identity  and  Diver- 
sity.3 That  which  makes  you  and  me  to-day  the  same 
beings  that  thought  or  walked  or  studied  yesterday 
is  the  constant  creative  activity  of  God.  God,  by 
a  "  constitution,"  or  appointment  of  things,  that  is 

1  Some  account  of  this  controversy  may  be  found  in  my  History  of  the 
Congregational  Churches,  pp.  273-276. 

2  Here  again  I  borrow  from  the  volume  above  cited. 

3  Compare  Fisher,  History  of  Christian  Doctrine,  p.  403. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  259 

"  arbitrary"  in  the  sense  that  it  depends  on  his  will 
alone,  sees  fit  to  appoint  that  the  acts  and  thoughts 
of  the  present  moment  shall  be  consciously  continu- 
ous of  those  of  the  past  ;  and  it  is  this  ever-renewed 
creation  that  gives  all  personal  identity  to  the  in- 
dividual.1 What  is  true  of  each  man  is  also  true  of 
the  race.  God  has  constituted  all  men  one  with 
Adam,  so  that  his  primal  sin  is  really  theirs,  and  they 
are  viewed  as  "Sinners,  truly  guilty,  and  Children  of 
Wrath  on  that  Account."  3 

Mr.  Lecky  has  characterized  this  volume  as  "  one 
of  the  most  revolting  books  that  have  ever  proceeded 
from  the  pen  of  man."  Without  at  all  sharing  the 
severity  of  his  criticism,  it  may  fairly  be  said  to  be  a 
work  that  renders  more  difficult,  if  anything,  one  of  the 
most  mysterious  problems  of  religion — the  origin  and 
universal  pervasiveness  of  evil. 

Our  glance  at  Edwards's  principal  writings  has  neces- 
sarily been  fleeting;  but  it  has  sufficed  to  show  that 
he  impressed  several  principles  on  the  minds  of  his 
contemporaries  and  successors.  Teaching  that  the 
sinner  possesses  the  natural  power,  but  not  the  inclina- 
tion, to  do  the  will  of  God,  he  held  that  a  change 
of  disposition,  wrought  by  a  conversion  through  the 

1  See  Original  Sin,  pp.  338-346.     1758. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  355- 

3  History  of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Rationalism  in 
Europe,  i.,  p.  368,  New  York,  1866;  see  also  Allen,  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards, p.  312. 


260  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

transforming   work    of   the    Spirit    of    God,   was   not 

*-  i  i  L_.j_r —  ""        "      ~^rnrr»ut,  uu    _ 

merely  the  primary,  but  the  only  impor  |Jn 

beginning  a  Christian  life.  He  taught,  also,  that  the 
essential  characteristic  of  that  life  was  love  to  God  and 

to  his  creatures  rather  than  to   self,    and   that   there 
\ 

could  be  no  true  religious  life  which  did  not  have  its 
seat  in  the  emotions  and  will  even  more  than  in  the 
intellect.  Edwards  did  not  live  long  enough  to  work 
out  a  full-rounded  system.  But  besides  the  evident 
features  of  his  teachings  at  which  we  have  glanced,  he 
dropped  many  hints  and  half-elaborated  suggestions 
which  made  his  work  not  merely  the  beginning  of  a 
development  carried  much  farther  by  his  followers, 
but  have  led  to  the  claim  that  he  was  the  father  of  most 
\  various  tendencies  in  later  New  England  thought. 

Edwards's  pastorate  at  Stockbridge  was  the  harvest- 
time  of  his  intellectual  activity;  but  it  was  followed  by 
a  brief  episode  that  had  the  promise  of  usefulness  for 
him  as  a  former  of  character  and  a  leader  of  young 
men.  The  death  of  Rev.  Aaron  Burr,  the  husband  of 

f  Edwards's  third  daughter,  Esther,  in  September,  1757, 
left  vacant  the  presidency  of  Princeton  College,  which 
JBurr  had  occupied  since  1748.  The  "  College  of  New 
Jersey  "  had  been  founded,  in  1746,  as  an  institution 
in  more  hearty  sympathy  with  the  revival  movement 
to  which  Edwards  was  attached  than  were  Harvard  or 
Yale.  \Nine  of  its  trustees  were  graduates  of  Yale.1 

1  Dexter,  Biographical  Sketches,  i.,  p.  220. 


JON  A  THA  N  ED  WA  RD  S  261 

The  college  had  recently  been  permitted  (1753)  by  the 
Connecticut  legislature  to  raise  funds  in  Edwards's 
native  colony  by  means  of  a  lottery,  "  for  the  encour- 
agement of  religion  and  learning,"  as  the  act  read.1 
It  appealed  to  New  England  as  much  as  to  the  Mid- 
dle States,  and  represented  what  was  then  freshest 
and  most  spiritually  warm-hearted  in  New  England 
thought.  Naturally  the  trustees  looked  to  Edwards; 
and,  two  days  after  Burr's  death,  elected  him  to  the 
vacant  presidency.8 

Edwards  hesitated.  He  wished  to  complete  his 
History  of  the  Work  of  Redemption,  which  should  set 
forth  his  conceptions  of  theology  as  a  whole.3  Yet 
the  call  was  one  he  felt  to  be  pressing,  and  with  the 
supporting  advice  of  an  ecclesiastical  council  which 
met  at  Stockbridge  early  in  January,  1758,  he  ac- 
cepted the  appointment.  But  he  was  destined  to  as- 
sume the  work  of  the  proffered  office  only  to  lay  it 
down.  Inoculated  with  smallpox  as  a  protective 
measure,  on  February  13,  1758,  the  disease,  usually 
mild  under  such  circumstances,  took  an  unfavorable 
turn,  and  he  died  at  Princeton,  March  22d,  in  his 
fifty-fifth  year,  leaving  his  work,  from  a  human  point 

.*•  "" 

of  view,  incomplete.  > 

Jonathan  Edwards  the  controversialist,  the  revival 

1  Colonial  Records,  x.,  pp.  217,  218. 

*  Dwight,  Life,  p.  565. 

3  Letter  to  the  Princeton  trustees,  ibid.,  p.  569. 


262  JONATHAN  EDWARDS  : 

preacher,  and  the  metaphysician  is  the  figure  oftenest 
in  our  thought.  It  is  necessary  that  it  should  be  so, 
for  in  all  these  respects  he  was  a  leader  of  men.  But 
as  we  think  of  him  in  these  attributes  he  seems  re- 
mote. His  controversies  are  over  questions  in  which 
our  age  takes  languid  interest,  his  denunciatory  ser- 
mons we  read  with  reluctance,  his  explanations  of  the 
will,  of  the  constitution  of  the  human  race,  or  of  the 
end  for  which  God  created  the  world  we  admire  as 
feats  of  intellectual  strength ;  but  they  do  not  move 
our  hearts  or  altogether  command  the  assent  of  our 
understandings.  The  thought  I  wish  to  leave  with 
you  is  rather  of  the  man  who  walked  with  God.  No 
stain  marred  his  personal  character,  no  consideration 
of  personal  disadvantage  swayed  him  from  what  he 
deemed  his  duty  to  the  truth  in  the  controversy  at 
Northampton  which  led  to  his  dismission.  He  was 
the  type  of  a  fearless,  patient,  loyal  scholar.  But  this 
steadfast-mindedness  was  based  on  more  than  personal 
uprightness.  To  him  God  was  the  nearest  and  truest 
of  friends,  as  well  as  the  strongest  of  sovereigns.  In 
his  narrative  of  his  religious  experience  he  noted  the 
delight  and  the  strength  that  he  found  in  the  saying 
of  the  old  Hebrew  prophet  regarding  the  Saviour:1 
A  man  shall  be  as  an  hiding  place  from  the  wind, 
and  a  covert  from  the  tempest ;  as  rivers  of  water  in  a 
dry  place,  as  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary 

1  Isaiah  xxxii.,  2  ;  see  Hopkins,  Life,  p.  36  ;  Dwight,  Life,  p.  132. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  263 

land."  Above  all  his  other  gifts  and  acquisitions  he 
had,  and  Ee  made  men  feel  that  he  had,  a  vision  of 
the  glory  of  God  that  transfigured  his  life  with  a 
beauty  of  spirit  that  makes  his  memory  reverenced 
even  more  than  his  endowments  of  mind  are  respected. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY 


265 


VII. 
CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

AS  one  walks  up  Beacon  Street  from  King's  Chapel 
in  Boston  one  passes,  at  the  crown  of  the  hill, 
two  handsome  buildings,  each  devoted  to  the  interests 
of  a  religious  body  calling  itself  Congregational.  Al- 
most opposite  each  other,  Channing  Hall  and  the  new 
Congregational  House  bear  witness  in  brown-stone,  or 
in  granite,  marble,  and  brick,  to  the  division  of  the 
historic  churches  of  colonial  New  England  into  two 
separate,  and  probably  permanently  antagonistic, 
camps, —  those  nicknamed  "  Orthodox"  and  "  Lib- 
eral." The  visible  manifestation  of  this  separation 
dates  only  from  the  opening  decades  of  the  nineteenth 
century;  but  the  causes  of  this  parting  run  back  at 
least  sixty  years  before,  and  reveal  themselves  in  the 
sharp  antagonisms  of  pre-Revolutionary  Massachu- 
setts. 

In  the  last  lecture  we  considered  the  life  and  work 
of  Jonathan  Edwards,  chief  leader  among  our  native 
New  England  ministry  in  a  revived  and  intenser  Cal- 
vinism, in  a  warmer  spiritual  life,  and  in  an  insistent 
and  awakening  type  of  preaching.  To-day  we  shall 

267 


268  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

turn  to  the  story  of  one  who  was  often  Edwards's 
opponent,  who  had  no  sympathy  with  Edwards's 
theology,  who  doubted  the  wisdom  of  the  revival 
movement  which  Edwards  championed,  and  who 
largely  helped  to  give  an  impetus  in  the  direction 
which  Edwards  stigmatized  as  "  Arminian,"  or  even 
toward  more  "  Liberal  "  views  beyond,  to  a  consider- 
able section  of  the  New  England  churches. 

The  name  Charles  Chauncy  has  been  twice  borne  by 
men  eminently  distinguished  in  the  New  England 
ministry.  The  first  to  wear  it  was  a  Puritan  exile, 
who  had  been  born  in  1592,  had  graduated  from 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  1613,  had  enjoyed  a 
fellowship  at  that  university,  and  had  been  vicar  at 
the  English  town  of  Ware  for  ten  stormy  years  when 
the  policy  of  Laud  drove  him  to  New  England  in 
1637. *  After  preaching  three  years  to  the  Pilgrim 
congregation  at  Plymouth,  where  he  was  recognized 
as  a  man  of  learning  and  power,  in  spite  of  some  criti- 
cism caused  by  his  insistence  on  the  immersion  of  in- 
fants and  the  celebration  of  the  Lord's  Supper  in  the 
evening  as  the  only  rightful  modes  of  observing  the 
sacraments,2  he  was  called  to  Scituate  in  1641 ;  and 
in  November,  1654,  became  the  second  president  of 


1  For  sketches  of  President  Chauncy,  see  Mather,  Magnalia,  i.,  pp. 
463-476,  1853-55  ;  and  W.  C.  Fowler,  in  New  England  Historical  and 
Genealogical  Register,  x.,  pp.  105-120,  251-262. 

2  Winthrop's  Journal,  i.,  pp.  397-399  ;  ii.,  pp.  86,  87,  1853. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  269 

Harvard,  a  post  that  he  filled  with  conspicuous  ability 
till  his  death  in  February,  1672. 

President  Chauncy's  eldest  son,  Isaac,  after  graduat- 
ing at  the  infant  Harvard  in  1651,  discharged  a  learned, 
controversial,  and  unpopular  ministry  in  England, 
chiefly  in  London,  till  his  death  in  1712.'  This  Isaac 
had,  in  turn,  a  son,  named  Charles  for  his  distinguished 
grandfather,  who  in  early  life  followed  the  grand- 
father's example  by  emigrating  to  America,  and  died, 
a  merchant,  at  Boston,  in  May,  171 1.2  To  the  mer- 
chant a  son  was  born  at  Boston,  on  New  Year's  day, 
1705,  to  whom  the  name  Charles  was  given  in  turn, 
and  who  is  the  subject  of  the  present  lecture.8 

Left  an  orphan  at  six  years  of  age,  Charles  grew  up 
at  Boston,  and  in  1717,  when  scarcely  twelve,  entered 
Harvard,  being  a  few  months  younger  at  the  time  he  be- 
gan his  college  course  than  was  Jonathan  Edwards  when 
the  latter  entered  Yale  a  year  before.  Graduating 

1  Sibley,  Graduates  of  Harvard,  i.,  pp.  302-307. 

3  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Gen.  Register,  x.,  p.  324. 

1  No  full  biography  of  Rev.  Dr.  Charles  Chauncy  has  been  published. 
His  colleague,  Rev.  John  Clarke,  published  a  Discourse  .  .  .  at  the 
Interment  of  the  Reverend  Charles  Chauncy,  at  Boston  in  1787,  which 
has  some  biographic  facts.  Brief  sketches  may  be  found  in  Emerson, 
Historical  Sketch  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston,  pp.  173—214,  Boston, 
1812;  by  Fowler,  in  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Gen.  Register,  x.,  pp.  324-336; 
in  Memorials  of  the  Chauncys,  pp.  49-70,  Boston,  1858  ;  in  Sprague,  An- 
nals of  the  American  Pulpit,  "  Unitarians,"  pp.  8-13,  New  York,  1865  ; 
and  in  Ellis,  History  of  the  First  Chtirch  in  Boston,  pp.  187-208,  Bos- 
ton, 1881.  An  appreciation  of  his  literary  work  may  be  found  in  Tyler, 
History  of  American  Literature,  ii.,  pp,  199-203,  New  York,  1879. 


270  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

in  1721  with  a  distinguished  record  for  scholarship, 
he  studied  theology  at  Boston  or  at  Cambridge;  and, 
on  June  12,  1727,  was  chosen  by  a  vote  of  sixty-four 
to  forty-five  to  the  colleague  pastorate  of  the  old  First 
Church  of  Boston  at  a  salary  of  four  pounds  and  ten 
shillings  a  week  and  firewood  for  his  household  use.1 
On  October  25th,  following,  he  was  ordained2;  as  was 
the  custom,  preaching  the  sermon  himself,3  for  New 
England  had  not  yet  wholly  outgrown  the  feeling  that 
such  a  service  was  a  test  of  the  candidate's  pulpit 
abilities,  as  essential  to  enable  the  council  to  judge  of 
his  fitness  as  his  examination  in  theology  or  his  rela- 
tion of  Christian  experience. 

Chauncy's  elder  associate  in  the  charge  of  the  Bos- 
ton First  Church  was  Thomas  Foxcroft,  who  had 
occupied  that  post  with  eminent  repute  as  a  preacher 
since  1717,  and  was  to  labor  side  by  side  with  Chauncy 
till  death  separated  the  colleagues  in  1769."  It  illus- 
trates the  fundamental  kindliness  of  spirit  of  the  two 
men  thus  joined  in  a  common  work,  that  though  they 
took  diametrically  opposite  positions  regarding  the 
questions  raised  by  the  '*  Great  Awakening,"  and 
wrote,  the  one  in  defense  and  the  other  in  disapproval, 

1  Emerson,  p.  176  ;  Ellis,  p.  187.  2  Ellis,  p.  187. 

3  His  text  was  Matt,  xxviii.,  20. 

4  Foxcroft  died  June  18,  1769,  in  his  seventy-third  year.     Though  he 
continued  in  the  pastorate  of  the  Boston  First  Church  till  his  death,  he 
was  thought  to  have  lost  something  of  his  early  fire  and  pulpit  power, 
owing  to  a  paralytic  shock  experienced  in  1736. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  2?  I 

of  that  hotly  contested  movement,  this  disagreement 
never  affected  their  personal  good-fellowship.  '  He 
was  a  real  good  Christian,"  said  Chauncy  of  Foxcroft 
as  he  preached  that  colleague's  funeral  sermon,  "  a 
partaker  of  the  Holy  Ghost;  uniform  in  his  walk  with 
God  .  .  .  fixing  his  dependence  ...  on  the 
mercy  of  God  and  the  atoning  blood  and  perfect  right- 
eousness of  Jesus  Christ  "  ; '  and  this  spiritual  apprecia- 
tion one  for  the  other  seems  to  have  underlain  the  sharp 
diversities  of  view  of  these  long-associated  ministers. 
Naturally,  as  the  younger  colleague  of  a  preacher  of 
reputed  eloquence,  and  even  more  because  he  was 
marked,  as  a  sermonizer,  by  a  studious  simplicity  of 
speech  that  avoided  all  rhetorical  adornment  as  a 
species  of  intellectual  dishonesty,  Chauncy's  early 
ministry  attracted  little  notice.  Indeed,  this  sim- 
plicity of  pulpit  composition,  which  always  charac- 
terized him,  led  a  hearer,  to  whom  it  was  reported 
that  Chauncy  had  prayed  that  God  would  never 
make  him  an  orator,  to  observe  that  "his  prayer 
was  unequivocally  granted."2  Something  of  this 
lack  of  rhetorical  adornment  may  have  been  due  to 
a  rapidity  of  composition  which  frequently  enabled 
him  to  write  his  afternoon  sermon  in  full  during  the 
noon-day  intermission  between  the  two  Sunday  ser- 
vices. But  the  same  qualities  of  style  appear  in  his 

1  Sermon  on    the   Death   of  Rev.    Thomas  Foxcroft,   Boston,    1769, 
quoted  in  Ellis,  p.  183.  2  Emerson,  p.  184. 


272  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

most  labored  treatises ;  and  in  the  investigation  of  a 
doctrinal  or  political  theme  Chauncy  was  capable  of 
most  protracted  study.  He  had  none  of  the  intuitive 
grasp  or  metaphysical  genius  of  Edwards,  but  in 
patient  scholarly  investigation  he  had  not  a  superior, 
and  probably  not  an  equal,  in  eighteenth -century 
New  England.  The  ornate  taste  of  the  period  imme- 
diately following  the  American  Revolution  was  inclined 
to  ridicule  Chauncy's  style  a  little;1  but  men  always 
respected  his  thought.  Yet  his  very  simplicity  and 
directness  make  his  sermons  easy  reading;  and  a  mod- 
ern reader  deems  it  not  the  least  of  merits  that  one 
is  never  at  a  loss  as  to  Chauncy's  meaning.  What 
he  has  to  say  is  always  worthy  of  attention,  and  the 
thought  frequently  stands  out  all  the  more  strikingly 
by  reason  of  the  plainness  of  its  verbal  garb. 

This  directness  of  public  utterance  in  the  pulpit  or 
by  the  written  page  was  accompanied  by  a  similar 
bluntness  of  private  address.  Chauncy  would  not 
flatter.2  Yet,  though  deemed  rather  formidable  when 
he  called  on  his  parishioners,  as  he  was  accustomed  to 
do  on  Monday  mornings,3  he  always  had  a  kindly  heart, 
and  his  family  life  was  always  cheerful  and  helpful. 
A  friend  of  his  later  years  has  thus  drawn  his  portrait : 4 

1  John  Clarke,  Discourse,  p.  28  ;  Emerson,  p.  205. 

2  John  Clarke,  ibid.t  p.  25. 
8  Ellis,  p.  194. 

4  Letter  of  Rev.  Dr.  Bezaleel  Howard,  dated  January  22,  1033,  in 
Sprague,  Annals,  "  Unitarians,"  p.  12. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  2?$ 

"  He  was,  like  Zaccheus,  little  of  stature.  God  gave  him 
a  slender,  feeble  body,  a  very  powerful,  vigorous  mind,  and 
strong  passions;  and  he  managed  them  all  exceedingly  well. 
His  manners  were  plain  and  downright, — dignified,  bold, 
and  imposing.  In  conversation  with  his  friends  he  was 
pleasant,  social,  and  very  instructive." 

In  his  home-life  he  was  the  cheerful  and  friendly 
companion.  A  student  by  habit,  he  yet  found  the 
time  to  be  much  with  his  household.  But  he  had  to 
endure  the  discipline  of  much  personal  sorrow.  His 
own  health  was  long  precarious.  Three  times  he  had 
to  mourn  the  death  of  a  wife.  His  declining  years 
were  spent  in  the  comparative  wreck  of  the  town  of 
his  ministry  consequent  upon  the  struggles  for  Ame- 
rican independence,  —  for  Boston  did  not  recover  its 
population  or  its  full  prosperity  till  near  the  time  of 
Chauncy's  death. 

The  little  colonial  seaport  capital  of  Chauncy's  early 
ministry  had  altered  much  since  the  days  of  John 
Cotton.1  Though  still  largely  Puritan,  the  Puritan 
ascendancy  had  been  more  broken  there  than  else- 
where in  New  England.  Its  inhabitants  numbered 
about  fifteen  thousand  at  Chauncy's  settlement,  and 
did  not  increase  to  more  than  twenty  thousand  during 
the  period  covered  by  his  long  ministry.  But  they 

1  See  the  Memorial  History  of  Boston,  Boston,  1882,  passim,  espe- 
cially ii.,  pp.  187-268,  437-490;  iii.,  pp.  189-191,  for  the  facts  pre- 
sented in  this  paragraph. 


2/4  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

included  the  wealthy  and  the  political  administrators 
of  the  colony;  and  the  officers  of  government  com- 
bined with  the  more  prosperous  merchants  and  ship- 
owners to  form  an  aristocracy  of  much  pretensions  to 
fashion  and  of  much  desire  to  reflect,  in  a  distant  way, 
London  social  life.  English  books  were  more  widely 
read  than  in  rural  New  England.  English  philosophi- 
cal and  religious  thought  found  a  ready  response.  The 
cosmopolitan  spirit  characteristic  of  a  seaport  was  more 
manifest  in  ideals  and  habits  of  life  than  elsewhere  in 
New  England.  Congregationalism  was  the  predomi- 
nant religious  polity,  being  represented  by  seven 
churches  at  the  time  of  Chauncy's  settlement;  but 
two  Episcopal  churches  drew  upon  the  elements  of 
the  community  which  were  by  reason  of  crown  ap- 
pointments or  by  taste  most  in  sympathy  with  Eng- 
land ;  while  the  French  Huguenot  exiles,  the  Quakers, 
the  Baptists,  and  the  Presbyterians  were  represented 
by  single  congregations. 

If  the  provincial  town  had  its  questions  of  wealth, 
politics,  and  fashion  beyond  any  other  in  New 
England,  it  had  also  in  a  peculiar  degree  its  prob- 
lems of  poverty.  In  spite  of  a  cheapness  of  many 
articles  of  food  as  surprising  to  a  Londoner  of  that 
time  as  to  any  present  New  England  householder,  a 
report  prepared  fifteen  years  after  Chauncy's  settle- 
ment enumerated  a  thousand  poor  widows,  sure  testi- 
mony to  the  tribute  of  life  wrung  by  the  ocean  from 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  2?$ 

the  commerce  of  the  seaport,  and  fifteen  hundred 
negroes;  and  as  early  as  1735,  the  town  authorities 
declared  to  the  provincial  legislature  that  Boston  had 
become  "  the  resort  of  all  sorts  of  poor  people,  which 
instead  of  adding  to  the  wealth  of  the  town,  serve 
only  as  a  burden  and  continual  charge."  1 

Religiously  estimated,  Boston  was  not  what  it  had 
been  in  the  days  of  the  founders.  The  old  Puritan 
enthusiasm  had  departed,  and  though  the  Sunday 
congregations  were  large  and  Sunday  was  observed 
with  a  strictness  that  surprised  English  visitors,  the 
Thursday  Lecture,  once  so  popular,  was  greatly  ne- 
glected ; 2  while  wealth,  commercial  interests,  and  the 
presence  of  a  foreign  office-holding  class  had  largely 
deprived  religion  of  its  original  primacy  in  popular 
interest.  '  The  Generality,"  '  wrote  Whitefield  in 
his  journal  of  1740,  "  seem  to  be  too  much  conformed 
to  the  World.  There  's  much  of  the  Pride  of  Life  to 
be  seen  in  their  Assemblies.  Jewels,  Patches,  and  gay 
Apparel  are  commonly  worn  by  the  Female  Sex,  and 
even  the  common  People,  I  observed,  dressed  up  in 
the  Pride  of  Life." 

Such  was  the  general  aspect  of  affairs  when  Boston, 
in  common  with  the  American  colonies  as  a  whole, 

1  Boston    Town  Records,  January   i,   1735  ;  in  Memorial  History  of 
Boston,  ii.,  p.  459. 

2  Ibid. ,  pp.  467,  468  ;   see  also  Whitefield's  characterization  in  his 
Seventh  Journal,  p.  44.     2d  edition,  London,  1744. 

'Whitefield,  ibid. 


276  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

was  shaken  by  the  "  Great  Awakening"1  in  1740. 
Premonitory  evidences  of  an  increased  interest  in  re- 
ligion had  appeared  in  revival  movements  in  many 
places  in  rural  New  England  during  the  five  years 
that  had  elapsed  since  the  "  surprising  conversions  " 
under  Edwards's  ministry  at  Northampton  narrated  in 
a  previous  lecture.  But  the  chief  human  agency  in 
the  general  spiritual  overturning  that  began  in  1740 
was  George  Whitefield.  That  youthful  evangelist 
came  to  New  England  in  the  height  of  his  early  fame. 
Not  yet  twenty-six  at  the  time  of  his  arrival  in  Bos- 
ton, in  September,  1740,  his  reputation  for  zeal,  con- 
secration, and  an  oratorical  power  probably  unmatched 
in  the  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  pulpit,  had  pre- 
ceded him,  and  produced  an  expectancy  in  the  popular 
mind  that  well  prepared  the  way  for  the  deep  impres- 
sion that  his  actual  presence  caused.  '  My  hearing 
how  god  was  with  him  everywhere  as  he  came  along," 
wrote  one  of  his  humbler  converts,2  "it  solumnized  my 
mind  &  put  me  in  a  trembling  fear  before  he  began 
to  preach  for  he  looked  as  if  he  was  Cloathed  with 
authority  from  ye  great  god."  His  ecclesiastical  posi- 
tion was  one,  moreover,  to  attract  attention.  In  full 
sympathy  with  the  type  of  religious  thought  char- 
acteristic of  the  Congregational  and  Presbyterian 

1  The  best  single  account  of  this  revival  movement  and  its  consequences 
is  still  that  of  Joseph  Tracy,  The  Great  Awakening,  Boston,  1842. 

2  See  Nathan  Cole's  Narrative,  in  G.  L.  Walker,  Some  Aspects  of  the 
Religious  Life  of  New  England,  pp.  89-92.     Boston,  1897. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  2JJ 

Churches,  he  was  yet  a  minister  of  the  Church  of 
England ;  and  he  represented  also  the  spiritual  power 
of  the  new  Oxford  movement  in  which  he  and  the 
Wesleys  were  alike  leaders.  New  England  had  never 
listened  to  such  a  preacher,  and  has  never  in  its  history 
bowed  in  such  admiration  before  any  proclaimer  of  the 
Gospel  message. 

At  Boston  Whitefield  was  greeted  enthusiastically 
by  all  classes  in  the  community.  Governor  Belcher 
welcomed  him  with  effusion  and  was  one  of  his  most 
devoted  and  demonstrative  hearers.  On  the  Sunday 
following  his  arrival  he  preached  for  Foxcroft,  Chaun- 
cy's  colleague,  with  "  great  and  visible  effect  "  ; '  and 
this  experience  was  repeated  for  ten  days  in  most  of 
the  Congregational  meeting-houses  of  Boston  or  with 
larger  audiences  on  the  Common.  A  brief  journey  to 
the  eastward  as  far  as  York  was  followed  by  another 
week  of  similar  pulpit  success  in  Boston,  and  then  the 
evangelist  passed  onward  in  his  rapid  flight  by  way  of 
Concord  and  Worcester  to  Northampton,  and  thence, 
preaching  at  Westfield,  Springfield,  Hartford,  New 
Haven,  and  at  some  of  the  smaller  intermediate  towns, 
to  New  York  and  the  southern  colonies.  Everywhere 
his  audiences  were  as  wax  under  the  spell  of  his 
eloquence.  On  repeated  occasions  men  cried  out  and 
women  fainted ;  many  in  the  weeping  congregations 
declared  themselves  converted.  Massachusetts  and 

1  Whitefield,  Seventh  Journal,  p.  28. 


278  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

Connecticut  were  profoundly  stirred.  And  the  mes- 
sage was,  on  the  whole,  one  addressed  to  the  real 
wants  of  sinful  men.  It  was  adapted  not  merely  to 
excite  the  emotions  of  a  passing  hour,  but  to  point 
out  the  need  and  the  way  of  salvation.  The  move- 
ment thus  inaugurated  had  upon  it  in  some  very  con- 
siderable degree  the  blessing  of  God.  The  two  or 
three  years  that  followed  Whitefield's  preaching  were 
the  only  marked  period  of  general  ingathering  that 
our  churches  enjoyed  between  the  passing  away  of  the 
founders  of  New  England  and  the  last  decade  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Yet,  if  the  young  evangelist  was  undoubtedly  earnest 
and  sincere,  he  was  also  opinionated  and  harsh  in  his 
judgments;  and  these  qualities  speedily  made  trouble. 
Speaking  in  the  Old  South  Church  during  his  stay  in 
Boston  he  declared  that  "  the  Generality  of  Preachers 
talk  of  an  unknown,  unfelt  Christ.  And  the  Reason 
why  Congregations  have  been  so  dead,  is  because  dead 
Men  preach  to  them."  This  strain  of  criticism  he 
reiterated  throughout  New  England.  In  spite  of 
Jonathan  Edwards's  protest/  he  preached  at  Suffield, 
to  the  students  at  New  Haven,  and  elsewhere  on  "the 
dreadful  Ill-Consequences  of  an  unconverted  Minis- 
try." 3  And,  in  summing  up  the  impressions  of  his 


1  Whitefield,  Seventh  Journal,  p.  40. 

2Dwight,  Life  of  Pres.  Edwards,  p.  147. 

3  Whitefield,  Seventh  Journal,  pp.  50,  53,  55. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  2Jg 

New  England  pilgrimage  for  publication,  Whitefield 
wrote:  "  Many,  nay  most  that  preach,  I  fear  do  not 
experimentally  know  Christ  "  ; '  while  of  Harvard  and 
Yale  he  recorded  his  impression  that  "  their  Light  is 
become  Darkness,  Darkness  that  may  be  felt."  2 

A  second  characteristic  of  Whitefield  which  gave 
countenance  to  what  was  later  to  be  the  most  extrava- 
gant feature  of  the  ' '  Awakening ' '  was  the  weight  which 
he  put  on  the  physical  effects  of  his  preaching  as  evi- 
dence of  the  presence  of  God  in  the  congregation. 
Though  Rev.  Thomas  Prince  could  witness  that  he 
did  "  not  remember  any  crying  out,  or  falling  down, 
or  fainting  "  3  under  Whitefield's  preaching  at  Bos- 
ton, such  extreme  physical  manifestations  took  place 
during  the  delivery  of  his  sermons  elsewhere  ; 4  and 
even  at  Boston  Whitefield  could  record  of  his  preach- 
ing in  the  New  North  Church  that 5 

"  Jesus  Christ  manifested  forth  his  Glory.  Many  hearts 
melted  within  them.  .  .  .  Look  where  I  would,  the 
Word  smote  them,  I  believe,  through  and  through,  and  my 
own  Soul  was  very  much  carried  out.  Surely  it  was  the 
Lord's  Passover.  I  have  not  seen  a  greater  Commotion 
since  my  Preaching  at  Boston." 

So  markedly  was  this  over-valuation  of  the  physical 
a  trait  of  the  young  evangelist  that  Edwards,  who,  as 

1  Whitefield,  Seventh.  Journal,  p.  56.  2  Ibid.,  p.  57. 

3  Quoted  in  Tracy,  Great  Awakening,  p.  116. 

4  Whitefield,  Seventh  Journal,  pp.  S9-,  62,  63,  69,  74. 
5 Ibid.,  p.  39. 


280  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

we  have  seen,  was  not  out  of  sympathy  with  such 
bodily  manifestations  of  extreme  feeling,  remonstrated 
with  Whitefield  on  the  importance  attached  to  them.1 
These  peculiarities  of  the  English  revivalist  were 
exaggerated  by  those  whom  his  preaching  raised  up 
to  imitate  his  methods.  Many  of  these  itinerating 
pastors,  like  Edwards,  Bellamy,  Parsons,  Wheelock, 
Pomeroy,  or  Graham,  were  men  of  the  highest  charac- 
ter and  great  usefulness  to  the  churches.  Yet,  under 
Edwards's  preaching  at  Northampton  in  1741,  as  Ed- 
wards himself  recorded,  "  it  was  a  very  frequent  Thing 
to  see  an  House  full  of  Out-Cries,  Paintings,  Convul- 
sions, and  such  like  "  ;2  and  under  Parsons's  searching 
appeals,  to  quote  the  preacher's  own  words,  "  stout 
men  fell  as  though  a  cannon  had  been  discharged,  and 
a  ball  had  made  its  way  through  their  hearts."  Men 
claimed  to  see  heaven  and  hell  in  visions;  and  whole 
communities  were  thrown  into  excitement  by  these 
reports,  as  was  Lebanon,  Connecticut,  by  the  asser- 
tions of  a  boy  of  thirteen  and  of  a  girl  of  eleven  that 
Christ  had  shown  them  the  Book  of  Life,  and  the 
names  of  some  of  their  neighbors  written  therein,  and 
that  "  the  Book  of  Life  was  filled  up,  wanting  about 
One  Page  .  .  .  and  when  that  was  fill'd  up,  the 
Day  of  Judgment  was  to  come." 

1  Dwight,  Life  of  Pres.  Edwards,  p.  147  ;  Tracy,  Great  Awakening,  p. 
100.  2  Christian  History,  issue  for  January  21,  1743-44-  3  Tracy,  p.  138. 

4  Solomon  Williams,  The  More  Excellent  Way,  Preface.  New  Lon- 
don, 1742. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  28 1 

And  the  more  radical  leaders  in  the  movement  were 
marked  by  yet  more  questionable  methods.  Of  these 
extremists  the  most  notorious  was  James  Davenport, 
minister  at  Southold,  Long  Island,  regarding  whom 
Whitefield,  whose  judgments  as  to  character  were  not 
penetrating,  affirmed  "  that  he  never  knew  one  keep 
so  close  a  walk  with  God."  Preaching  as  an  itinerant 
at  Boston,  in  July,  1742,  Davenport  declared  in  prayer, 
"  that  most  of  the  ministers  of  the  town  of  Boston  and 
of  the  country  are  unconverted,  and  are  leading  their 
people  blindfold  to  hell."  *  At  New  London,  in 
March,  1743,  in  a  scene  that  was  almost  a  riot,  he 
heaped  up  the  books  of  Flavel,  Increase  Mather,  Col-  \ 
man,  Sewall,  his  fellow-revivalist  Parsons,  and  others  j 
held  in  esteem  in  the  churches,  and  walked  about  the 
blazing  pile,  declaring  that  as  the  smoke  of  these 
volumes  went  upward,  so  the  smoke  of  their  authors 
was  now  rising  from  the  torments  of  hell.3  Davenport 
did,  indeed,  later  modify  his  practices,4  and  a  Boston 
jury,  as  well  as  the  Connecticut  Legislature,  adjudged 
him  insane.  But  he  undoubtedly  represented  a  certain 
phase  of  the  "Awakening." 

The  effect   of  this  turmoil  was  largely  disastrous. 

1  Tracy,  Great  Awakening,  p.  230. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  247. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  249.     For  further  volumes  burned,  see  Chauncy,   Season- 
able Thoughts,  pp.  222,  223.     Boston,  1743. 

4  See    Two  Letters  from    the   Rev.  Mr.    Williams   6°    Wheelock  a/ 
Lebanon,  to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Davenport,  which  were  the  Principal  Means 
of  his  late  Conviction  and  Retraction.     Boston,  1744. 


282  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

The  "Awakening"  ceased  almost  as  speedily  as  it  had 
begun,  and  was  followed  by  a,  period  of  great  spiritual 
deadness.  Edwards  himself,  as  before  stated,  waited 
from  1744  to  1748  for  a  candidate  for  church  member- 
ship to  appear.  Churches  were  divided.  In  Con- 
necticut severe  measures  were  taken  by  the  civil 
authorities  to  prevent  itinerancy  and  any  preaching 
undesired  by  the  regular  incumbent  of  the  parish.  In 
that  colony,  and  to  some  extent  in  Massachusetts,  the 
more  extreme  sympathizers  with  the  revival  formed 
Separatist  churches  that  ran  a  stormy,  spiritually  dis- 
tracted, and  persecuted  career.  In  general  the  minis- 
try and  the  churches  of  New  England  and  of  the 
middle  colonies  were  divided  into  two  camps  on  the 
question  whether  the  methods  of  the  revival  were  to 
be  praised  or  blamed,  known  as  "  New  Lights"  and 
"  Old  Lights  "  in  New  England  and  as  "  New  Side  " 
and  "  Old  Side  "  in  the  colonies  to  the  southward. 

Of  this  "Old  Light"  party  in  New  England 
Chauncy  was  the  leader,  and  this  leadership  first 
brought  him  into  prominence.  Thoroughly  con- 
vinced himself  that  the  Whitefieldian  revival  was  an 
outburst  of  ill-directed  emotion  that  would  do  more 
harm  than  good  to  the  abiding  spiritual  life  of  the 
churches,  and  averse  by  nature  to  what  he  deemed 
extravagance  of  method  and  appeal,  he  set  himself  to 
do  what  he  could  to  check  the  evils  of  a  movement 
that  seemed  to  him  dangerous  to  true  religion. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  283 

Chauncy,  though  condemned  by  many  as  an  "oppo- 
ser  of  the  work  of  God,"  '  was  no  denier  of  the  neces- 
sity of  a  fundamental  change  of  heart  as  essential  to 
entrance  on  the  Christian  life.  A  brief  extract  from 
his  sermon  on  The  New  Creature*  preached  about 
eight  months  after  Whitefield's  visit  to  Boston  may 
illustrate  alike  his  views  and  his  sermonic  style.3 

"  Put  the  question  to  your  own  soul,  Have  I  had  experi- 
ence of  such  a  change,  as  that  I  can  esteem  myself  a  new 
creature?  Have  I  indeed  been  transform  d by  the  renewing 
of  the  HOLY  GHOST  ?  How  is  it  with  my  APPREHENSIONS  ? 
What  are  my  tho'ts  of  sin  ?  Does  it  seem  a  slight 
thing  or  an  accursed  evil  ?  What  are  my  thoughts  of  holi- 
ness ?  Do  I  entertain  a  low  opinion  of  it,  or  does  it  appear 
a  matter  infinitely  reasonable  and  important  ?  What  are 
my  thoughts  of  CHRIST  ?  Do  I  see  no  beauty  in  him  for 
which  he  should  be  desired,  or  does  he  appear  altogether 
lovely  ?  Can  I,  in  my  own  apprehensions,  do  without  him, 
or  do  I  see  the  need,  the  absolute  need  I  stand  in  of  him, 
and  that  there  is  no  other  name  given  under  heaven  among 
men,  whereby  I  can  be  saved  ?  And  how  is  it  with  my 
PURPOSES  ?  What  am  I  determin'd  for,  this  world  or 
another  ?  Is  my  resolution  for  GOD  and  CHRIST  and 
heaven  and  holiness,  a  sudden,  accidental,  transient  busi- 
ness, or  the  settled,  permanent,  habitual  purpose  of  my 
heart  ?  And  how  is  it  with  my  AFFECTIONS  ?  On  what  are 

1  Edwards,  Thoughts  Concerning  the  Present  Revival,  pp.  143,  144, 
Boston,  1742  ;  Chauncy,  Seasonable  Thoughts,  pp.  392,  393. 

2  The  New  Creature  Described,  and  consider' d  as  the  sure  Characteris- 
tic of  a  Man's  being  in  Christ,  Boston,  1741.     Preach'd  at  the  Boston 
Thursday  Lecture,  June  4,  1741. 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  21,  22. 


284  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

they  plac'd,  and  after  what  manner  are  they  exercis'd  ? 
Whom  do  I  love  most,  GOD  or  the  world  ?  Which  do  I 
fear  most,  the  anger  of  GOD,  or  outward  losses  and 
crosses  ?  What  grieves  me  most,  the  frowns  of  the  world, 
or  the  want  of  GOD's  favour  ?  Which  do  I  place  my  hope 
most  in,  the  things  of  time,  or  the  things  of  eternity  ?  And 
how  is  it  as  to  my  LIFE  AND  MANNERS  ?  .  Have  I 

renounced  my  sins,  all  my  sins,  my  most  beloved  sins,  or 
do  I  still  keep  them  ?  And  if  I  have  turn'd  from  sin,  to 
whom  have  I  turn'd  ?  Have  I  turn'd  to  GOD  in  CHRIST  ? 
And  is  it  my  daily  constant  endeavour  to  live  to  GOD  ? 
What  is  my  course  and  manner  of  life  ?  Is  it  conducted 
by  the  will  of  GOD  ?  Is  it  conform'd  to  the  example  of 
CHRIST  ?  Is  it  a  just  transcript  of  the  precepts  of  the 
gospel  ?  Am  I  pious  towards  GOD  ?  Am  I  righteous 
towards  men  ?  Am  I  sober  in  respect  of  myself  ?  " 

This  is  no  low  or  mean  conception  of  conversion. 
It  is  not  unworthy  of  Edwards  himself  in  its  spiritual 
insight.  But,  all  the  more  because  Chauncy  thus 
emphasized  the  patient  manifestations  of  the  renewed 
life  as  the  true  evidence  of  Christian  character,  he 
doubted  the  spiritual  worth  of  the  sudden  emotions, 
the  exciting  sermons,  the  crowds,  the  outcries,  and 
the  visions  of  the  Whitefieldian  revival.  Undoubtedly 
he  discredited  that  revival  too  much.  God's  hand  was 
in  it  more  than  he  could  see.  But  his  motives  in  op- 
posing it  were  no  lower,  or  less  directed  to  what  he 
deemed  the  advancement  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
than  those  of  its  warmest  advocates. 

Chauncy  preached  a  sermon  having  for  its  theme 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  285 

the  Out-pouring  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  on  May  13,  1742,' 
when  his  church  held  a  fast  to  supplicate  that  divine 
blessing,  and  in  the  discourse  he  set  forth  with  clear- 
ness and  power  what  a  permanent  work  of  the  divine 
Spirit  would  he;  but  by  the  autumn  of  that  year  the 
coming  of  Rev.  James  Davenport  to  Boston  led  him 
to  a  positive,  rather  than  a  predominantly  negative,  at- 
tack on  what  he  deemed  the  errors  of  the  "Awakening." 
Though  he  declared  in  his  sermon  on  Enthusiasm*  or, 
as  we  should  say,  Fanaticism,  that  "  the  SPIRIT  of 
GOD  has  wro't  effectually  on  the  hearts  of  many,  from 
one  time  to  another;  and  I  make  no  question  he  has 
done  so  of  late,  in  more  numerous  instances,  it  may 
be,  than  usual";3  he  now  directly  and  powerfully 
attacked  those  methods  of  which  the  doings  of  James 
Davenport  were  an  extreme  instance. 

Always  a  student,  and  intent  on  drawing  from  the 
past  warnings  against  the  excesses  of  the  present, 
Chauncy  published  the  same  year  an  account  of  the 
fanatical  manifestations  among  the  persecuted  Hugue- 
nots of  the  Cervennes,4  and  of  English  claimants  to 

1  The  Out-pouring  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  A  Sermon  P reached  in  Boston, 
May  /j,  1742.  Boston,  1742. 

t*  Enthusiasm  described  and  caution  d  against,  Boston,  1742.  Preached 
the  "  Lord's  day  after  the  Commencement,  1742."  Text,  I  Cor.  xiv.,  37. 

zlbid.,  pp.  25,  26. 

4  7^he  Wonderful  Narrative,  or  a  Faithful  Account  of  the  French 
Prophets,  Glasgow,  1742.  The  best  account  of  these  "  prophets"  is  in 
Baird,  The  Huguenots  and  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  ii., 
pp.  183-190. 


286  CHARLES  CIIAUNCY 

prophetic  inspiration  like  John  Lacy;1  but  his  chief 
polemic  treatise  was  called  out  by  Edwards's  defense 
of  the  revival,  printed,  as  has  been  pointed  out  in  a 
previous  lecture,"  in  1742,  and  entitled  Some  Thoughts 
Concerning  the  present  Revival  of  Religion  in  New 
England.  To  Edwards,  Chauncy  replied,  in  1743,  in 
an  elaborate  volume,  the  Seasonable  Thoughts  on  the 
State  of  Religion  in  New  England*  imitating  in  title 
Edwards's  work.  In  this  book  Chauncy  gave  an 
extensive  and  painstaking  collection  of  evidence  wit- 
nessing to  the  extravagances  and  disorders  of  the 
"Awakening,"  and  prefaced  the  whole  with  a  historical 
account  of  the  Antinomian  controversy  of  a  hundred 
years  before  as  affording  in  some  sense  a  parallel.  It 
was  considered  a  most  effective  arraignment  at  the 
time  of  its  publication,  and  it  is  indispensable  to  any 
present-day  student  of  the  revival. 

This  protracted  controversy  caused  Chauncy  great 
labor.  How  great,  and  with  what  physical  results,  can 
best  be  told  in  his  own  words.4 

"  Mr.  Whitefield  made  his  appearance  among  us.  This 
kept  me  still  to  close  and  constant  labor  in  my  study.  I 

1  These  "prophecies"  may  be  found  in  The  Prophetical  Warnings  of 
"John  Lacy,  Esq.,  Pronounced  under  the  Operation  of  the  Spirit ',  Lon- 
don, 1707  ;  and  several  similar  contemporary  tracts. 

2  See  ante,  p.  238. 

3  Boston,  1743. 

4  From  a  manuscript  letter  of  May  6,  1768,  to  Rev.  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles, 
now  in  the  possession  of  Yale  University. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  287 

wrote  and  printed  in  that  day  more  than  two  vol.  in  oct? 
A  vast  number  of  pieces  were  published  also  wrote  by 
others;  but  yr  was  scarce  a  piece  .  .  .  but  was  sent  to 
me,  and  I  had  the  labor  sometimes  of  preparing  it  for  the 
press,  and  always  of  correcting  the  press.  I  had  also  hun- 
dreds of  letters  to  write  in  answer  to  letters  received  from 
all  parts  of  the  country.  This  labor,  continued  without 
interruption,  for  so  many  years,  in  addition  to  my  minis- 
terial work,  wch  I  did  not  neglect  in  any  part  of  the  time, 
broke  my  constitution  .  .  .  and  brot  on  an  habitual 
cholic  wch  reduced  me  to  a  skeleton  in  opposition  to  the 
utmost  skill  of  all  the  physicians  in  town.  But  by  a  resolute 
severity  as  to  regimen,  and  a  great  number  of  journies  of  7, 
8,  9,  and  10  hundred  miles,  in  the  course  of  three  or  four 
years,  I  so  far  recovered  my  health,  as  to  be  able  to  pursue 
my  studies  again." 

Some  features  of  this  regimen,  to  which  Chauncy 
attributed  his  restored  health,  were  thus  noted  by  a 
friend  of  his  old  age.1 

"  The  Doctor  was  remarkably  temperate  in  his  diet  and 
exercise.  At  twelve  o'clock  he  took  one  pinch  of  snuff, 
and  only  one  in  twenty-four  hours.  At  one  o'clock,  he 
dined  on  one  dish  of  plain,  wholesome  food,  and  after  din- 
ner took  one  glass  of  wine,  and  one  pipe  of  tobacco,  and 
only  one  in  twenty-four  hours.  And  he  was  equally 
methodical  in  his  exercise,  which  consisted  chiefly  or  wholly 
in  walking.  I  said,  '  Doctor,  you  live  by  rule.'  '  If  I  did 
not,  I  should  not  live  at  all.'  ' 

Chauncy's  attitude  in  the  Whitefieldian  controversy 

1  Letter  of  Rev.  Dr.  Bezaleel  Howard,  in  Sprague,  Annals,  "  Unita- 
rians," p.  13. 


288  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

brought  him  into  prominence  not  only  in  New  Eng- 
land but  in  Scotland.  Whether  for  this  eminence  or 
on  more  personal  grounds,  he  received  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Divinity  from  the  University  of  Edinburgh 
in  1742. ' 

This  controversy  showed  him  to  be  a  man  of  cour- 
age in  the  expression  of  his  convictions,  and  the  same 
characteristic  trait  was  exhibited  in  another  arena  in 
1747.  Massachusetts  from  1690  to  1750,  and  again 
during  the  Revolutionary  War  was  plagued  with  a  de- 
preciated paper  currency,  the  story  of  which  might 
prove  instructive  to  those  among  us  who  wish  to  "  ex- 
pand "  the  circulating  medium.  At  Chauncy's  settle- 
ment about  two  and  two  thirds  of  a  shilling  in  notes 
had  been  equivalent  to  a  shilling  in  "  hard  money  " ; 
by  1747  it  took  six  and  a  half  of  the  paper  issue  to 
equal  the  coin  it  supposedly  represented.2  In  his 
election  sermon  before  the  governor  and  legislature, 
on  May  27,  1747, 3  Chauncy  spoke  temperately  but  un- 
mistakably against  this  4  and  a  number  of  other  current 
abuses  from  the  text,  "  He  that  ruleth  over  Men  must 
be  just,  ruling  in  the  Fear  of  God."  This  plainness 
of  speech  angered  not  a  few  of  the  legislators,  and 

1  It  first  appears  on  the  title-page  of  his  sermon  on  Enthusiasm  ;  see 
Historical  and  Genealogical  Register,  x.,  p.  325. 

2  See  the  table  given  by  Felt,  An  Historical  Account  of  Massachusetts 
Currency,  p.  135.     Boston,  1839. 

3  Election  Sermon,  Boston,  1747. 

4  Ibid,  pp.  19-23,  29-31,  37-42,  62-64.  52  Samuel,  xxiii.,  3. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  289 

a  fruitless  proposition  was  made  that  the  legislature 
should  express  its  displeasure  by  refusing  the  custom- 
ary publication  of  the  sermon.  Chauncy  thus  answered 
the  man  who  told  him.1 

"  It  shall  be  printed,  whether  the  general  court  print  it  or 
not.  And  do  you,  sir,  say  from  me,  that,  if  I  wanted  to 
initiate  and  instruct  a  person  into  all  kinds  of  iniquity  and 
double  dealing,  I  would  send  him  to  our  general  court." 

The  Whitefieldian  controversy  had  interrupted  a 
course  of  study  which  fitted  Chauncy  for  the  next 
great  public  discussion  in  which  he  engaged, — that  on 
Episcopacy.  In  his  account  of  his  own  life,  Chauncy 
has  written  thus  of  the  beginnings  of  his  investigation 
of  this  theme.8 

"  The  occasion  was  that  Mr  Davenport 3  [first  rector  of 
Trinity  Church,  Boston]  who  married  my  first  wife's  sister, 
declared  for  the  Church,  and  went  over  [to  England]  for 
orders,  ...  I  imagined  my  connection  wth  him  would 
naturally  lead  me  into  frequent  conversations  upon  this 
point.  And  that  I  might  be  thoroughly  qualified  for  a  de- 
bate wth  him  or  others  he  might  be  connected  wth  . 
I  entered  upon  this  study." 

The  studies  thus  begun  for  a  domestic  use  were 
eventually  employed  in  a  much  wider  debate.  To  us 
the  opposition  of  the  Congregational  ministry  and 

1  Emerson,  Historical  Sketch  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston,  p.  198. 

2  Letter  of  May  6,   1768,  to  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles,  in  possession  of  Yale 
University. 

8  Rev.  Addington  Davenport,  Harvard,  1719,  died  in  1746. 


290  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

churches  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  Episcopacy  may 
seem  undue  and  uncharitable.  An  examination  of 
the  situation  will  disabuse  us  of  the  thought.  That 
opposition  was  not  primarily  to  Episcopacy  as  a  re- 
ligious system,  but  to  Episcopacy  in  its  political  con- 
sequences. The  New  England  colonies  had  been 
planted  by  men  and  women  anxious  to  get  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  bishops  and  courts  of  the  English  Estab- 
lishment. But  these  colonies  were  still  subject  to  the 
authority  of  the  British  government,  and  should  that 
government  see  fit  to  establish  the  religious  institu- 
tions of  England  beyond  the  Atlantic,  there  was 
nothing  to  prevent  the  non-Episcopal  churches  of 
the  colonies  from  suffering  the  disabilities  imposed 
on  "  Dissenters  "  in  England. 

Doubtless  there  was  much  want  of  charity  in  both 
parties;  but  the  interferences  of  the  English  govern- 
ment in  the  affairs  of  the  Congregational  churches  of 
Massachusetts, —  an  interference  incited  by  the  few 
Episcopal  ministers  in  the  province, — was  ominous  of 
what  might  happen  were  Episcopacy  to  grow  in  power. 
Two  instances  may  suffice.  When  the  Congregational 
churches  of  Massachusetts  sought  to  call  a  "  Synod," 
in  1725,  to  take  counsel  as  to  how  the  prevailing  re- 
ligious decline  could  be  arrested,  the  project,  though 
approved  by  the  Massachusetts  Upper  House,  was 
blocked  by  the  English  government,  aroused  thereto 
by  the  Episcopal  clergy  of  Boston  and  their  superior, 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  2Q I 

the  Bishop  of  London.1  When,  to  give  a  second 
example,  some  Congregational  ministers  procured  a 
charter  from  the  Massachusetts  legislature,  in  1762, 
for  a  "  Society  for  Propagating  Christian  Knowledge 
among  the  Indians  of  North  America,"  the  Episcopal 
ministers  of  Massachusetts,  fearing  that  the  new  enter- 
prise would  endanger  the  interests  of  the  English 
"  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Foreign 
Parts,"  of  which  most  of  them  were  paid  missionaries, 
stirred  up  the  English  ecclesiastical  authorities  to  pro- 
cure the  disallowance  of  the  new  society's  charter  by 
the  "  King  in  Council."  2  If  such  interferences  with 
local  self-government  were  brought  about  by  a  few 
scattered  and  but  partially  organized  Episcopalians, 
what  might  not  be  feared  in  the  way  of  parliamentary 
interference  should  a  complete  hierarchy  be  set  up  by 
act  of  Parliament  in  the  colonies  ? 

That  an  episcopate  should  be  established  was  the 
ardent  wish  of  the  colonial  Episcopalians.  In  1724, 
1725,  1727,  1749,  and  1767,'  and  probably  at  frequent 

1  See  W.  S.  Perry,  Papers  Relating  to  the  History  of  the  Church  in 
Massachiisetts,  pp.  179-181,  184,  186-190,  351,  privately  printed,  1873  J 
Hutchinson,  History  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  ii.,  pp. 
322,  323,  ed.  Boston,  1767  :  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  iv.,  p. 

454,  455- 

"2  Perry,  Papers  Relating  to  the  History  of  the  Church  in  Massa- 
chusetts, pp.  471,  472,  476-481,  497  ;  Chauncy,  Remarks  on  .  .  . 
the  Bishop  ofLandaff's  Society  Sermon,  pp.  19,  20  ;  see  also  Bradford, 
Memoir  .  .  .  of  Rev.  Jonathan  May  hew,  pp.  197,  235,  Boston,  1838. 

3  Perry,  Papers  Relating  to  the  History  of  the  Church  in  Massachu- 
setts, pp.  143,  175,  176,  227,  433,  531,  etc. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

intervals  between,  the  Massachusetts  Episcopal  clergy 
urged  their  desires  on  the  English  authorities.  In 
1749  it  seemed  probable  that  the  British  govern- 
ment  would  take  the  wished-for  step,  though  there 
was  hesitation  about  appointing  resident  bishops  for 
New  England.1  This  prospect  was  undoubtedly  one 
of  the  causes  that  led  that  earnest  defender  of  the 
validity  of  New  England  ordinations,  Chief-Justice 
Paul  Dudley,  to  found  the  Dudleian  lectureship  at 
Harvard.  The  danger  passed  by  at  the  time,  but  only 
to  recur  again,  in  1761, 2  in  aggravated  form,  and  to 
become  chronic  till  the  Revolution  put  an  end  to  it 
forever.  To  the  men  of  the  generation  before  the 
Revolution  the  peril  seemed  very  real ;  and  one  of  the 
acutest  and  most  learned  of  recent  Massachusetts  his- 
torians has  pointed  out  that,  in  New  England,  fear  of 
bishops  imposed  by  Parliament  was  as  potent  a  stimu- 
lus to  the  Revolutionary  spirit,  as  fear  of  taxes  im- 
posed by  Parliament.3  It  was  a  main  cause  in  uniting 
the  Congregational  ministry  almost  to  a  man  in  defense 
of  American  liberties.  And  how  largely  this  opposi- 
tion to  Episcopacy  was  political  resistance  to  foreign 
aggression  is  shown  by  the  fact  that,  when  once 
American  independence  was  achieved,  New  England 


1  Palfrey,  History  of  Areta  England,  v.,  p.  95. 

2  See  Mayhew's  letter  to  Hollis,  in  Bradford,  Memoir,  p.  195. 

3  Mellen  Chamberlain,  John  Adams,  pp.  21-35,  Boston,   1898,  with 
valuable  citation  of  authorities. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  293 

witnessed  the  introduction  of  an  episcopate  with  its 
characteristic  claims  to  exclusive  divine  authority,  not 
only  without  united  resistance  such  as  had  been  pro- 
tractedly manifested  before  the  Revolution,  but  with- 
out more  criticism  than  any  innovating  religious  body 
has  always  to  encounter. 

Jonathan  Mayhew,  the  brilliant,  patriotic,  conten- 
tious, and  Arian  pastor  of  the  Boston  West  Church 
began  an  aggressive  defense  of  American  liberties, 
civil  and  ecclesiastical,  as  early  as  1750; '  and,  in  1763, 
he  plunged  into  a  bitter  discussion  with  Rev.  East  Ap- 
thorp  of  Cambridge  over  the  aims  and  methods  of  the 

Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Foreign 
Parts,"  which  was  represented  by  Apthorp  and  other 
Episcopal  missionaries  in  New  England.  Before  this 
debate  had  run  its  two  years'  heated  course  it  had  in- 
volved the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  himself.8 

Chauncy's  first  participation  in  printed  opposition 
to  Episcopacy  was  in  his  publication  of  the  Dudleian 
lecture  in  defence  of  non-Episcopal  ordination  in  1762. 
Five  years  later,  in  December,  1767,  a  sermon  preached 
before  the  "  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel 
in  Foreign  Parts  "  by  the  Bishop  of  Landaff,3  in  which 

1  His  Discourse  on  the  Anniversary  of  the  Death  of  Charles  I.  was 
printed  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  and  attracted  much  attention  by 
its  defense  of  liberty. 

2  An  extended,  though  one-sided,  account  of  this  controversy  may  be 
found  in  Bradford,  Memoir  of    .     .     .     Jonathan  Mayhew,  pp.  243 
et  seq. 

3  Preached  at  London,  February  20,  1767. 


2Q4  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

the  American  colonies  were  represented  as  lands  of 
barbarism  and  heathenism,  drew  forth  from  Chauncy 
a  noble,  temperate,  and  unanswerable  defense  of  the 
character  of  the  founders  of  New  England,  their 
efforts  to  evangelize  the  Indians,  and  the  then  existing 
state  of  the  religious  and  educational  institutions  that 
they  had  planted.1 

The  reply  just  noted  was  to  a  publication  by  an 
English  prelate;  Chauncy's  next  contribution  to  the 
Episcopal  debate  was  an  Answer  to  an  able  American 
Episcopalian,  a  graduate  of  Yale,  and  rector  at  Eliza- 
beth, New  Jersey,  Thomas  Bradbury  Chandler.  In 
1767  Chandler  had  published  An  Appeal  to  tlie  Public 
in  behalf  of  the  Church  of  England  in  America, —  a 
sober-minded  presentation  of  the  well-known  claims  of 
Episcopacy  as  a  method  of  church  government,  and 
of  the  advantages  to  Episcopacy  to  be  derived  from 
the  establishment  of  bishops  in  the  colonies.  This 
Appeal  Chauncy  answered,  in  1768,"  with  an  elaborate 
pamphlet  addressed  to  every  point  of  Chandler's 
argument;  and,  as  Chandler  made  rejoinder  in  1769, 3 
Chauncy  replied  a  second  time  in  1770,*  only  to  draw 

1  A  Letter  to  a  Friend,  etc.,  the  title  on  fly-leaf  being,  Dr.  Chauncy  s 
Remarks  on  certain  Passages  in  the  Bishop  of  Landaff's  Society  Sermon. 
Boston,  1767. 

2  The  Appeal  to  the  Public  Answered  in  Behalf  of  the  Non-Episcopal 
Churches  in  America.     Boston,  1768. 

3  The  Appeal  Defended,  etc.     All  Chandler's  tracts  in   this  debate 
were  printed  in  New  York. 

4  Reply  to  Dr.  Chandler's  Appeal  Defended. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  295 

forth  a  third  pamphlet  from  Chandler  in  1771. '  This 
controversy  led,  in  1771,  to  the  publication  of  Chaun- 
cy's  chief  work  on  the  Episcopal  claim,  the  Compleat 
View  of  Episcopacy,  as  Exhibited  in  the  Fathers  of 
the  Christian  Church,  until  the  Close  of  the  Second  Cen- 
tury— a  volume  largely  based  on  the  studies  of  his 
early  ministry.2  Probably  no  other  New  Englander 
of  his  day  could  have  shown  such  an  acquaintance 
with  the  fathers  from  Clement  of  Rome  to  Clement  of 
Alexandria,  and  the  work  must  be  considered  an  able 
and  successful  attempt  to  give  an  3 

"  ANSWER  to  those,  who  have  represented  it  as  a  CERTAIN 
FACT,  universally  handed  down,  even  from  the  Apostles 
Days,  that  GOVERNING  and  ORDAINING  AUTHORITY  was 
exercised  by  such  Bishops  only,  as  were  of  an  ORDER 
SUPERIOR  to  Presbyters." 

Chauncy's  activities  against  the  establishment  of  a 
British  episcopate  in  America  were  by  no  means  con- 
fined to  the  publications  noted.  Writing  to  a  friend 
in  1766,  he  said: 4 

"  We  the  ministers  of  this  town  have  for  a  long  course  of 
years  held  a  correspondence  with  the  '  Committee  of  Depu- 
tation of  Dissenters  '  at  London,  and  have  found  our  ac- 
count in  it.  They  have  been  greatly  serviceable  to  us 

1  The  Appeal  Farther  Defended. 

2  Preface,  p.  iii. 
8  Title-page. 

4  Letter  of  September  29,  1766,  to  Rev.  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles,  now  in  the 
possession  of  Yale  University. 


296  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

many  ways.  It  was  owing  to  yr  influence,  under  God,  that 
the  scheme  for  the  mission  of  a  Bishop  into  America  about 
20  years  ago  '  was  entirely  disconcerted  and  defeated." 

Chauncy's  wisdom  derived  from  this  experience  led 
him  to  fear  that  the  annual  joint  convention  of  dele- 
gates from  the  Synod  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
and  from  the  Connecticut  General  Association,  which 
met  from  1766  to  1775  to  guard  against  Episcopal 
encroachment,  would  defeat  its  object  by  arousing 
opposition  in  England  to  so  visible  a  union  of  Congre- 
gational and  Presbyterian  forces.  In  his  judgment, 
"  Separate  endeavours,  suitably  conducted,  are  the 
only  ones  that  will  serve  our  interest."  a  But  to  fears 
and  efforts  alike  the  Revolutionary  War  put  an  end. 

Of  that  war  the  work  of  Chauncy  in  this  Episcopal 
struggle  was  an  important  forerunner,  and  in  the 
fortunes  of  the  struggle  when  it  came  he  felt  a  keen 
and  patriotic  interest.  To  him  there  seemed  but  one 
side  that  could  possibly  be  right,  and  he  told  his 
friends,  with  a  rhetorical  exaggeration  very  unusual 
in  him,  that  angelic  aid  would  come  to  the  Ameri- 
cans, so  just  was  their  cause,  were  the  patriot  strength 
to  fail.3  The  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  and  the  suffer- 
ings of  Boston  under  the  repressive  measures  of  Parlia- 
ment called  out  vigorous  publications  from  his  prolific 

1  /.  e.,  the  attempt  of  1749-50. 

2  Letter  to  Rev.  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles,  of  June  29,  1767. 

3  Sprague,  Annals,   "  Unitarians,"  p.  9. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  29? 

pen.1  When  the  war  came,  the  siege  of  Boston 
drove  him  from  the  town  till  its  capture  by  Washing- 
ton's army,  in  March,  1776,  enabled  him  to  return. 
But  his  age  and  feebleness  precluded  any  very  active 
share  in  the  patriot  efforts.  His  own  struggle  for 
American  liberty  had  been  fought  chiefly  in  the  years 
before  Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill. 

In  considering  Chauncy's  relation  to  the  "  Great 
Awakening,"  it  has  been  seen  that  his  attitude  was 
directly  opposed  to  that  of  Edwards.  But  this  dis- 
agreement was  far  from  being  the  only  point  of  un- 
likeness  between  the  two  men.  During  Chauncy's 
ministerial  life  eastern  Massachusetts  was  largely 
moving  in  a  doctrinal  direction  in  striking  discord 
with  that  of  Edwards  and  his  school,  and  scarcely  less 
estranged  from  the  view-point  of  the  founders  of  New 
England.  This  "  Liberal  "  direction  was  one,  how- 
ever, in  which  the  development  of  English  Puritanism 
had  led  the  way.  In  the  home  land  not  merely 
Arminianism  but  Arianism  had  gained  strong  footing 
among  Presbyterian  Dissenters  during  the  first  quarter 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  had  become  predominant 
among  them  before  the  year  1750  was  reached.  Arian- 
ism, as  well  as  Arminianism,  tinged  the  writings  of 
some  of  the  ablest  English  theologians  of  that  period, 
both  within  and  without  the  Church  of  England,  and 

1  Discourse  on  the  Good  News  from  a  Far  Country,  1766  ;  A  Just  Repre- 
sentation of  the  Hardships  and  Sufferings  of  the  Town  of  Boston,  1774. 


298  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

the  books  of  Thomas  Emlyn,  William  Whiston, 
Samuel  Clarke,  Daniel  Whitby,  and  John  Taylor,  in 
which  this  doctrine  is  implied  or  expressly  asserted, 
were  among  the  most  valued  treatises  in  English  Dis- 
senting circles  during  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  They  had  strong  opponents,  indeed,  but 
they  were  widely  read ;  and  though  English  Congre- 
gationalism resisted  the  Arminian  and  Arian  inroad 
much  more  successfully  than  English  Presbyterianism, 
its  leaders,  Watts  and  Doddridge,  defended  the  his- 
toric Calvinism  rather  feebly. 

These  works  crossed  the  Atlantic  and  naturally 
found  most  welcome  in  eastern  Massachusetts,  since 
that  region,  owing  to  its  trade,  the  size  of  its  seaports, 
and  the  acquaintance  of  its  more  prominent  ministers, 
by  correspondence  at  least,  with  the  leading  English 
Dissenters,  was  more  susceptible  to  current  English 
thought  than  southern  and  western  New  England. 
Arminian  speculations,  as  they  were  then  called,  as  to 
free  will,  original  sin,  and  the  value  of  human  efforts 
in  securing  salvation  had  penetrated  somewhat  widely 
by  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  we  have 
already  had  occasion  to  notice  in  treating  of  Edwards. 
And  though  Arianism  was  too  radical  a  departure  for 
any  extensive  rooting  before  the  time  of  Edwards's 
death,  it  was  distinctly  advocated  by  Chauncy's 
neighbor  in  the  Boston  ministry,  Jonathan  Mayhew, 
in  1755,  while  his  ministerial  contemporaries,  Lemuel 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  2QQ 

Briant  of  Braintree,  Ebenezer  Gay  and  Daniel  Shute 
of  Hingham,  and  John  Brown  of  Cohassett  were  be- 
lieved to  sympathize  with  this  denial  of  the  Trinity. 
Elsewhere  in  eastern  Massachusetts  and  New  Hamp- 
shire Arian  outcroppings  had  appeared  before  1760; 
and,  in  1768,  Samuel  Hopkins  declared  his  "  convic- 
tion that  the  doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  was 
much  neglected,  if  not  disbelieved,  by  a  number  of 
ministers  in  Boston."  This  development  was  to  go 
on  silently,  and  for  the  most  part  unnoted,  during  the 
distractions  of  the  Revolutionary  struggle  and  of  the 
political  debates  that  followed  it,  till  it  burst  forth  in 
the  Unitarian  controversy  soon  after  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

With  this  gradual  modification  of  doctrine  Chauncy 
sympathized ;  and  in  its  spread  his  influence  was  as 
great  as  that  of  any  man  in  eastern  Massachusetts.  It 
was  all  the  more  so  because  he  was  no  radical  or  ex- 
tremist and  because  the  greater  part  of  the  writings  of 
which  he  was  the  author  were  of  a  character  to  win  the 
approval  of  Christians  generally.  This  moderation  of 
most  of  Chauncy's  utterances  renders  him  a  hard  man 
to  classify.  As  his  successor  in  the  pulpit  of  the  Bos- 
ton First  Church  pointed  out  in  1811,  his  sermons 
contain  much  that  is  "calvinistick,"  *  as  that  term  was 
later  used  by  American  Unitarians;  but  Chauncy 

1  William  Emerson,  Historical  Sketch  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston, 
p.  i 86. 


3OO  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

himself  was  no  Calvinist,  and  some  of  his  theories  are 
not  in  accord  with  any  historic  presentation  of  the 
Evangelical  faith.  The  ' '  orthodox  "  and  the  ' '  liberal " 
are  inextricably  intermixed  in  him,  and  in  that  char- 
acteristic he  was  probably  typical  of  the  contemporary 
stage  of  development  of  the  movement  which  ulti- 
mately became  Massachusetts  Unitarianism. 

Most  of  Chauncy's  doctrinal  writings  were  com- 
pleted before  1768,  though  the  more  important  were 
not  published  till  after  the  Revolutionary  War.1  In  a 
letter  giving  an  account  of  them  to  a  friend  at  the  date 
just  mentioned,  he  told  something  of  the  course  of 
study  by  which  he  was  led  to  them.  After  his  re- 
covery from  the  debility  consequent  on  overwork 
during  the  Whitefieldian  period,  he  said:2 

"  My  next  study  was  the  bible,  more  particularly  the 
epistles,  more  particularly  still  the  epistles  of  the  Apostle 
Paul.  I  spent  seven  years  in  this  study.  .  .  .  The 
result  of  my  studying  the  Scriptures  ...  is  a  large 
parcel  of  material  suted  to  answer  several  designs." 

This  labor  left  Chauncy  with  absolute  confidence  in 
the  full  and  final  authority  and  complete  inspiration 
of  the  Bible;  but  as  his  investigations  were  largely 
through  the  lenses  furnished  by  the  works  of  Locke, 
Clarke,  Taylor,  and  Whitby,3  the  results  were  in  many 

1  See  letter  of  May  6,  1768,  to  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles,  in  the  possession  of 
Yale  University.  2  Ibid. 

3  See  Chauncy's  grateful  acknowledgments  of  his  indebtedness  to 
Taylor,  in  his  Salvation  of  All  Men,  pp.  xi.-xiv.  London,  1784. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  301 

points  variant  from  current  orthodoxy.  Yet  to 
Chauncy  they  undoubtedly  seemed  the  teachings  of 
the  Bible  as  distinguished  from  man-made  systems, 
and  creeds  of  human  composition.1 

The  first  fruit  of  this  study  was  a  clever  anonymous 
satirical  pamphlet 2  which  he  contributed  to  the  dis- 
cussion on  Original  Sin  in  1758  —  a  debate  already 
noted  in  our  account  of  Edwards.  The  dissent  from 
current  Calvinistic  theories  of  imputation  here  indi- 
cated is  further  developed  in  his  Twelve  Sermons  of 
1765,  and  in  the  last  important  publication  he  set 
forth,  the  Five  Dissertations  on  the  Fall  and  its  Conse- 
quences, printed  in  1785,  though  written  before  1768. 
In  these  discussions  Chauncy  maintained  that  all  men 
capable  of  moral  action  are  sinners;  but  though  that 
universal  sinfulness  is  a  consequence  of  the  primal 
lapse,  it  is  an  indirect  consequence.  No  man  is  guilty 
of  any  but  his  personal  sins,  yet  those  personal  sins 
are  the  result  of  the  enfeeblement  of  his  nature  which 
the  Scriptures  include  under  the  comprehensive  term 
"  death,"  and  death  was  the  penalty  of  the  Adamic 
disobedience.3 

"  The  judicial  sentence  of  God,  occasioned  by  the  one 
offence  of  this  one  man,  is  that  which  fastens  '  death,'  with 

1  See  Salvation  of  All  Men ,  pp.  viii.,  ix.  ;  also  his  Twelve  Sermons, 
p.  iii. 

2  The  Opinion  of  One  that  has  perused  the  Summer  Morning's  Con- 
versation concerning  Original  Sin,  wrote  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Peter  Clark. 
Boston,  1758.  3  Twelve  Sermons,  p.  23. 


3O2  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

all  its  natural  causes  and  appendages,  upon  the  human 
kind;  and  tis  IN  CONSEQUENCE  of  this  sentence,  UPON  men's 
coming  into  existence  under  the  disadvantages  arising  from 
it,  that  they  '  sin  '  themselves." 

This  may  not  seem  a  wide  departure  from  then  cur- 
rent New  England  conceptions,  yet  the  cleft  between 
it  and  a  theory  like  that  of  Edwards  was  deep.  It 
enabled  Chauncy  to  hold  that  men  were  not  born  sin- 
ners, while  inevitably  becoming  offenders  if  they  grew 
to  years  of  moral  responsibility. 

The  immediate  occasion  of  the  preparation  of 
Chauncy's  Twelve  Sermons,  just  mentioned,  was  the 
preaching  in  Boston,  in  the  autumn  of  1764,  of  Robert 
Sandeman,1  that  curious  disciple  of  the  Scotch  re- 
ligious seceder,  John  Glas.  Sandeman,  who  found 
some  following  in  New  England,  especially  in  and 
about  Danbury,  Conn.,  held  that  "  justifying  faith  is 
nothing  more  or  less  than  the  bare  belief  of  the  bare 
truth"2 — that  is,  an  accurate  and  undoubting  intel- 
lectual acceptance  of  the  precise  facts  which  the  Script- 
ures reveal  concerning  the  life  and  work  of  the  Saviour 
constitutes  saving  faith  in  Christ.  Over  against 
Sandeman,  Chauncy  asserted  faith  to  be  such  an 
assent  of  the  mind  to  the  truths  witnessed  to  us  by 
the  testimony  of  God  in  Revelation  as  causes  them  to 

1  Chauncy   wrote    to    Stiles,    November  19,    1764,   "  Mr.    Sandeman 
went  from  this  town  last  Friday  P.  M."     Letter  in  possession  of  Yale 
University. 

2  See  Contributions  to  the  Eccles.  Hist,  of  Conn.,  p.  284.     New  Haven, 
1861. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  303 

become  a  spring  of  right  action  in  us,  and  leads  us  to 
repentance,  good  works,  and  holiness  of  life.1  It 
need  not  be  without  admixture  of  error  to  be  genuine. 
Some  error,  probably,  is  present  in  the  conceptions  of 
truth  even  of  those  of  clearest  spiritual  vision.8 

This  discussion  led  Chauncy  to  ask  how  saving  faith 
is  obtained,  and  he  answered  in  a  way  that  Edwards 
and  Hopkins  greatly  opposed  as  an  irreligious  exalta- 
tion of  human  powers,  though  his  answer  was  not  unlike 
that  of  the  representatives  of  the  older  Calvinism  in 
his  day.  He  urged  that  while  saving  faith  is  the  un- 
merited gift  of  the  "  Spirit  of  God,"  and  while  God  is 
sometimes  "  found  of  those  who  sought  him  not," 
God  "  no  more  ordinarily  BEGINS,  than  carries  on,  the 
work  of  faith,  as  it  respects  it's  existence  and  opera- 
tion in  the  hearts  of  sinners,  without  the  concurring 
use  of  their  powers  and  endeavours."  4  A  man  should 
be  urged  to  use  his  rational  powers  to  know  what  he 
can  of  God's  ways,  to  discern  good  and  evil,  and  to 
foresee  future  rewards  and  punishments.  He  ought, 
though  unregenerate,  to  recognize  the  teachings  of 
Revelation,  to  feel  something  of  the  "  sinfulness  of 
sin,"  to  practise  religious  duties,  to  read  and  meditate 
on  God's  Word,  to  be  present  and  attentive  at  public 
worship,  and  pray  fervently  and  persistently  to  God 
for  salvation.6  These  things  are  not  saving  faith,  but, 

1  Twelve  Sermons,  sermons  iii.-v.  2 Ibid.,  pp.  76-82. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  192.  *Ibid.,  p.  195.  *>  Ibid.,  pp.  205-216. 


304  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

Chauncy  affirms,  "'tis  'ordinarily'  in  concurrence 
with  '  these  endeavours'  of  sinners  that  God  bestows 
his  Spirit  to  '  begin  '  the  work  of  faith  "  '  The 
plain  truth  is,"  says  Chauncy,  that  "  God,  man,  and 
means  are  all  concerned  in  the  formation  of  that  char- 
acter, without  which  we  cannot  inherit  eternal  life."  * 

Naturally,  such  cooperation  as  this  in  the  process  of 
salvation  implies  a  very  different  degree  of  freedom  in 
man  than  Edwards  believed  to  exist;  and,  in  his 
Benevolence  of  the  Deity,  published  in  1784,  but  a  work 
to  which  he  could  refer  in  1768  as  "  wrote  many  years 
ago,"  3  Chauncy  treated  of  man's  liberty  at  some 
length.4  He  declared  that  man  is  "  an  intelligent 
moral  agent ;  having  in  him  an  ability  &\\&  freedom  to 
WILL  as  well  as  to  do,  in  opposition  to  NECESSITY 
from  any  extraneous  cause  whatever."  In  maintain- 
ing this  self-determination  he  had  Edwards  evidently 
in  mind  as  a  principal  antagonist.6 

It  is  equally  natural,  also,  that  in  the  generally  ex- 
cellent series  of  sermons  on  the  Lord's  Supper  which 
Chauncy  published,  in  1772,  under  the  title  of  Break- 
ing of  Bread,  he  should  uphold  the  Stoddardean  view, 
denial  of  which  had  cost  Edwards  the  Northampton 
pulpit,  and  urge  that 7  "  the  ordinance  of  the  supper  is 

1  Twelve  Sermons,  p.  216.  **  Ibid.,  p.  339. 

3  The  letter  of  May  6,  1768,  often  cited. 

4  Benevolence  of  the  Deity,  pp.  128-144. 

5  Ibid.,  title-page.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  131,132. 
7  Breaking  of  Bread,  p.  26;  see  also  ibid.,  pp.  191-113. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY  305 

admirably  well  adapted  to  promote  the  edification  of 
all  that  come  to  it  in  the  serious  exercise  of  faith, 
though  their  faith,  at  present,  should  not  be  such  as 
to  argue  their  being  '  born  from  above.'  ' 

But  however  much  man  can  cooperate  with  God, 
Chauncy  iterates  and  reiterates  that  "  the  worthiness 
of  that  glorious  person,  who  '  once  offered  up  himself 
a  sacrifice  to  God  for  sin,'  is  the  alone  foundation  of 
all  spiritual  bestowments,  whether  to  saints  or  sin- 
ners." ] 

To  the  thought  of  an  atonement  Chauncy  holds 
tenaciously.  That  atonement  was  due  to  the  2 

"  good  will  of  God,  and  [is]  one  of  the  glorious  effects  of 
it.  ...  Some  may  have  expressed  themselves,  so  as 
to  lead  one  to  think,  that  the  blood  of  Christ  was  shed  to 
pacify  the  resentments  of  God,  .  .  .  But  ...  so 
far  was  the  blood  of  Christ  from  being  intended  to  work 
upon  the  heart  of  God,  and  stir  up  compassion  in  him,  that 
it  was  love,  and  because  he  delighted  in  mercy,  that  he 
'  spared  him  not,  but  delivered  him  up  for  us  all.'  The 
incarnation,  obedience,  sufferings,  and  death  of  Christ  are 
therefore  to  be  considered  as  the  way,  or  method,  in  which 
the  wisdom  of  God  thought  fit  to  bring  into  event  the  re- 
demption of  man.  And  a  most  wisely  concerted  method  it 
is.  In  this  way,  mankind  are  obviously  led  into  just  senti- 
ments of  the  vile  nature,  and  destructive  desert  of  sin;  as 
also  of  that  sacred  regard,  which  God  will  forever  show  to 
the  honor  of  his  own  governing  authority:  Nor  could  they, 

1  Twelve  Sermons,  pp.  267,  268  ;  see  also  Salvation  of  All  Men,  pp. 

D.   2O. 


IQ,  20. 

*  Benevolence  of  the  Deity,  pp.  166,  167. 
20 


306  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

in  any  way,  have  been  more  powerfully  engaged  to  turn 
from  their  iniquities." 

Surely  this  is  not  far  from  that  governmental  theory 
of  the  atonement  which  the  younger  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards was  to  put  forth  in  the  autumn  of  1785,  a  year 
after  Chauncy's  book  was  published,  and  to  put  forth 
with  such  acceptance  that  it  was  long  regarded  as  a 
prime  characteristic  of  New  England  theology. 

In  the  biographical  letter  of  1768,  from  which  we 
have  repeatedly  quoted,  Chauncy  said : ' 

'  The  materials  for  one  design  I  have  put  together  and 
they  have  layn  by  in  a  finished  Quarto  vol.  for  some  years. 
This  is  wrote  wth  too  much  freedom  to  admit  of  a  publica- 
tion in  this  country.  Some  of  my  friends  who  have  seen  it 
have  desired  that  I  would  send  it  home a  for  publication, 
and  to  have  it  printed  wthout  a  name.  I  question  whether 
it  will  ever  see  the  light  till  after  my  death ;  and  I  am  not 
yet  determined,  whether  to  permit  its  being  yn  printed,  or 
to  order  its  being  committed  to  flames.  Tis  a  work  that 
cost  me  much  thot,  and  a  great  deal  of  hard  labor.  It  is 
upon  a  most  interesting  subject." 

The  work  thus  tantalizingly  indicated  was  issued  at 
last  by  its  author,  though  anonymously,  at  London, 
in  1784,  under  the  title  of  The  Mystery  hid  from  Ages 
and  Generations,  made  manifest  by  the  Gospel-Revela- 
tion :  or.  The  Salvation  of  All  Men  the  Grand  Thing 

1  Letter  to  Ezra  Stiles,  May  6,  1768. 

sz.  e.,  to  England,  curiously  illustrative  of  the  pre-Revolutionary 
feeling. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  307 

aimed  at  in  the  Scheme  of  God.  Though  anonymous, 
its  authorship  was  well  known,  and  called  forth  speedy 
reply  by  name.1 

In  this  volume  Chauncy  not  merely  declared  himself 
a  restorationist,  but  maintained  with  great  ingenuity, 
learning,  and  evident  sincerity  of  conviction  that  res- 
torationism  is  the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament,  and 
especially  of  the  Pauline  epistles.  No  less  positively 
than  Edwards,  Chauncy  holds  that  the  vast  majority 
of  intelligent  mankind  are  on  their  way  to  hell.3  But 
hell  is  not  eternal ;  it  is  a  place  of  frightful  suffering, 
prolonged  "  God  only  knows  how  long  "; 3  but  it  has 
an  end ;  and  the  end  will  come  when  the  Mediatorial 
King  of  this  dispensation  will  have  "  put  all  enemies 
under  his  feet,"  even  that  last  of  enemies,  the  second 
death,  and  shall  have  delivered  up  the  ransomed  and 
purified  universe  to  "  him  that  put  all  things  under 
him,  that  God  may  be  all  in  all."  4 

'  The  reign  of  Christ,  in  his  mediatory  kingdom,  is  to 
make  way  for  GOD'S  BEING  ALL  IN  ALL;  and  will  accord- 
ingly fast,  till  he  has  ripened  and  prepared  things  for  the 
commencement  of  this  glorious  period.  .  .  .  He  will 
[then]  give  up  his  mediatory  kingdom  to  the  Father,  who  will, 

1 E.  g.,  Jonathan  Edwards,  the  younger,  The  Salvation  of  All  Men 
Strictly  Examined,  and  the  Endless  Punishment  of  those  who  die  Im- 
penitent, Argued  and  Defended  against  the  Objections  and  Reasonings  of 
the  late  Rev.  Doctor  Chauncy,  of  Boston,  etc.  New  Haven,  1790. 

2  Salvation  of  All  Men,  p.  322  ;  for  Edwards's  views,  see  Works,  vii., 
pp.  417,  418  :  viii.,  pp.  202,  203.  3  Salvation  of  All  Men,  p.  343. 

4  See  i  Corinthians,  xv.,  21-28,  a  passage  of  which  Chauncy  makes 
much  in  his  argument. 


308  CHARLES   CHAUNCY 

from  this  time,  reign  IMMEDIATELY  himself ;  making  the 
most  glorious  manifestations  of  his  being  a  God,  and  Father, 
and  Friend  to  all,  in  all  things,  without  end. 

The  question  naturally  arises,  in  view  of  these  and 
other  passages  which  have  been  quoted,  as  to  what 
conception  Chauncy  had  of  the  person  of  Christ. 
Chauncy  nowhere  enters  fully  into  this  problem.  His 
language  regarding  the  Saviour  is  generally  that  of  the 
New  Testament,  but  as  far  as  I  have  observed  he  em- 
ploys only  those  descriptive  terms  of  Holy  Writ  which 
may  be  held  to  imply  subordination.  Christ  is  the 
"  Son  of  God,"  in  Chauncy 's  sermons  constantly. 
And  when  he  passes  from  the  words  of  Scripture  he 
uses  such  phrases  as  "  Saviour  of  Men,"  ;'  prime  min- 
ister of  God's  kingdom,"  and  "  grand  commissioned 
trustee  "  of  God's  purposes.2  He  affirms  "  that,  next 
to  God,  and  in  subordination  to  him,  we  should  make 
his  Son,  whom  he  has  authorized  to  be  our  King  and 
Saviour,  the  beloved  object  of  our  faith  and  hope,  our 
submission  and  obedience."  These,  and  many  similar 
proofs  that  could  be  adduced,  make  it  evident  that 
Chauncy  was  a  high  Arian.  Christ  to  him  was  an 
object  of  worship;  faith  in  Christ  was  the  condition  of 
our  salvation.  Our  acceptance  with  God  is  founded  on 
the  "  blood  and  righteousness"  of  Christ.  Christ  is 
the  "  all  in  all,"  the  sovereign  of  this  dispensation;3 
yet  he  is  not  God,  nor  equal  with  God. 

1  Salvation  of  All  Men,  pp.  217,  225.         2  Ibid.,  pp.  195,  324,  364. 
id,  pp.  217,  358,  364. 


CHARLES   CHAUNCY  309 

It  is  evident  that,  in  many  points,  Chauncy  had  de- 
parted not  merely  from  the  historic  theology  of  New 
England,  but  from  the  presentations  of  truth  historic- 
ally characteristic  of  the  Church  Universal.  But  he 
was  curiously  unconscious  of  this  departure.  He  be- 
lieved himself  "  unorthodox  "  on  the  question  of  the 
ultimate  fate  of  the  wicked,  and  in  his  speculations 
concerning  the  consequences  of  the  fall,1  but  he  felt 
himself  in  sympathy  not  merely  with  historic  Chris- 
tianity but  with  the  general  Christianity  of  his  own 
age.  Writing  in  1765,  he  had  said:8 

'  The  great  fault  of  the  faith  of  Christians  at  this  day 
.  .  .  does  not  lie,  as  I  imagine,  unless  in  here  and 
there  a  detached  instance,  in  fatal  mistakes  about  the  truth. 
The  incarnation,  life,  death,  resurrection,  and  exaltation 
of  Christ,  and  the  great  articles  connected  herewith,  and 
dependent  hereon,  stand  true  in  the  minds  of  most  chris- 
tians,  at  least  in  this  part  of  the  world:  Nor  do  they,  as  I 
conceive,  commonly  mix  falsehood  with  them,  at  least  in  so 
gross  a  sense  as  to  be  justly  chargeable  with  wholly  subver- 
ting their  real  meaning.  And  yet,  they  are  far  from  being 
the  subjects  of  a  faith  that  justifies.  And  the  reason  is 
because  the  assent  of  their  minds  to  the  report  of  the  gos- 
pel, is  not  of  the  right  kind.  Tis  the  produce  of  education 
and  tradition,  rather  than  the  testimony  of  God.  Tis  a 
feeble  inoperative  persuasion,  little  affecting  their  hearts  or 
influencing  their  lives.  They  receive  the  great  doctrines 
of  Christianity  as  speculations,  not  important  realities." 

I  have  quoted  this  passage  as  illustrative  alike  of 

1  Letter  of  May  6,  1768.  *  Twelve  Sermons,  pp.  91,  92. 


310  CHARLES  CHAUNCY 

Chauncy's  unconsciousness  as  to  whither  the  move- 
ment in  which  he  bore  an  influential  part  was  tend- 
ing, and  of  his  piety  of  heart.  And  I  take  it  that 
this  unconsciousness  was  characteristic  of  the  ministry 
of  eastern  Massachusetts  in  his  day.  The  Unitarian 
outcome  was  as  yet  unsuspected.  And,  as  for  Chauncy 
himself,  one  can  but  feel  that  in  piety,  devotion  to 
Christ,  depth  of  consciousness  of  sin  and  knowledge 
of  the  way  of  salvation,  in  spite  of  all  his  serious  modi- 
fications of  the  earlier  theology,  he  stood  in  much 
nearer  sympathy  with  the  founders  of  New  England 
than  with  Priestley,  Lindsey,  or  their  associates  who 
then  bore  in  England  the  Unitarian  name. 

Chauncy's  ministry  was  prolonged  to  the  close  of  its 
fifty-ninth  year.  Old  age  had  somewhat  limited  his 
activities,  but  his  mind  was  keenly  alive  to  the  last, 
and  as  his  end  drew  near,  he  "  was  observed  by  those 
who  were  near  him  to  be  a  great  part  of  his  time  en- 
gaged in  devotional  exercises."1  On  February  10, 
1787,  he  died  at  the  age  of  eighty-two;  and  he  left 
behind  him  the  memory  not  merely  of  a  strong  man 
who  greatly  influenced  New  England  thought,  but  of 
a  good  man,  whose  only  place  could  be  in  that  Re- 
deemer's kingdom  which  he  believed  would  ultimately 
include  all  men. 

1  Obituary  notice,  in  Massachusetts  Gazette,  February  13,  1787. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS 


3" 


VIII. 
SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

THE  fundamental  principles  of  New  England  Con- 
gregationalism have  always  encouraged  inde- 
pendence of  thought,  however  deficient  the  actual 
application  of  those  principles  may  sometimes  have 
been.  Congregationalism  has  never  held  that  Christian 
truth  is  the  possession  of  a  special  order  of  men,  or 
that  it  has  been  defined  once  for  all  in  any  creed  or 
exposition  of  merely  human  composition.  It  has 
never  believed  that  any  man  or  council,  since  the 
days  of  the  Apostles,  has  enjoyed  infallible  divine 
guidance;  and  if  it  has  throughout  most  of  its  history 
yielded  an  unquestioning  deference  to  the  books  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments,  it  is  because  of  a  conviction 
of  their  divine  authorship.  Congregationalism  has 
always  asserted  that  the  God-given  standard  of  its  faith 
is  open  on  equal  terms  to  the  investigation  of  laymen 
and  of  ministers;  and  that  the  occupant  of  the  pew,  if 
of  equal  learning,  has  no  inferiority  to  the  clergyman  in 
the  discovery  of  truth.  That  discovery,  Congrega- 
tionalism has  maintained,  is  brought  about  by  no 
mystical  processes,  or  submissions  to  assertions  of 

313 


314  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

authority,  but  by  the  application  to  the  divine  prin- 
ciples of  our  faith,  especially  as  revealed  in  the  Bible, 
of  the  same  reasoning  faculties  by  which  truth  in  any 
other  realm  of  knowledge  is  attained.  Hence,  Con- 
gregationalism has  been  characteristically  rationalistic, 
using  that  term  in  no  opprobrious  sense.  As  a  result, 
also,  New  England  has  produced  theologians  of  greater 
speculative  originality  than  any  other  region  of  Amer- 
ica. It  is  to  one  who  was  above  all  else  a  speculative 
theologian,  who  by  severest  logic  carried  the  hints 
and  the  formulated  principles  of  Edwards  to  posi- 
tions which  Edwards  himself  never  reached,  however 
latent  they  may  have  been  in  his  system,  who  built 
on  Edwards's  foundation  a  distinct  and  original  school 
of  theologic  thinking,  that  I  wish  to  turn  your 
thoughts  to-day  in  speaking  of  the  life  and  work  of 
Samuel  Hopkins. 

Yet,  in  describing  Hopkins  as  first  of  all  a  specula- 
tive theologian,  the  facts  cannot  be  overlooked  that 
he  was  also  a  forerunner  in  a  great  philanthropic  re- 
form and  a  hard-working  pastor.  It  is  to  the  honor 
of  New  England  Christianity  that  its  leaders  —  men 
as  far  apart  in  theological  thinking  as  Edwards  and 
Chauncy,  Bellamy  and  Channing,  Emmons  and  Bush- 
nell  —  have  been  men  of  eminent  piety  of  life  and 
pastoral  instincts  prompting  to  the  shepherding  of 
souls.  The  speculative  recluse,  spinning  his  system 
apart  from  contact  with  his  fellows,  or  the  theologian 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  315 

of  the  intellect  only,  divorcing  religious  truth  from 
personal  conduct,  have  never  found  New  England  a 
congenial  soil.  But  New  England  thinkers  have  dif- 
fered much  in  the  degree  in  which  their  presentations 
of  truth  have  been  the  logically  consistent  outcome  of 
principles  clearly  grasped  by  the  intellect,  and  in  the 
relentlessness  with  which  they  have  allowed  their 
premises  to  lead  to  the  full  sweep  of  the  dialectic 
conclusions  which  those  premises  implied.  In  that 
consistency  which  does  not  shrink  from  any  conclusion 
that  accepted  principles  seem  to  demand  Hopkins  was 
preeminent;  and  hence  it  may  truly  be  said  that  the 
speculative  theologian  is  the  aspect  under  which  he 
most  characteristically  presents  himself. 

The  theme  and  the  place  alike  remind  me  that  it 
would  be  unjust  to  begin  any  lecture  upon  Hopkins  in 
this  classroom  without  some  expression  of  apprecia- 
tion of  the  admirable  Memoir '  in  which  his  life  was 
narrated  and  his  work  estimated  by  Professor  Park 
nearly  half  a  century  ago — a  memoir  that  renders  the 
path  of  any  later  student  of  Hopkins  comparatively 
easy,  whether  he  agrees  with  all  the  judgments  of  the 
eminent  biographer  or  not. 

In  an  account  of  his  life  written  in  old  age,  Hopkins 
thus  introduced  himself: a 

1  By  Edwards  A.  Park,  forming  the  Preface  to  The  Works  of  Samuel 
Hopkins,  i.,  pp.  iv.-264,  Boston,  1852  ;   also  printed  separately,  Boston, 
1854. 

2  Hopkins's  quaintly  expressed  and  interesting  autobiography,  begun 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

"  I  was  born  at  Waterbury  in  Connecticut  on  the  Lord's 
day,  September  17,  1721.  My  parents  were  professors  of 
religion;  and  I  descended  from  Christian  ancestors,  both 
by  my  father  and  my  mother,  as  far  back  as  I  have  been 
able  to  trace  my  descent.  ...  As  soon  as  I  was  capable 
of  understanding,  and  attending  to  it,  I  was  told  that  my 
father,  when  he  was  informed  that  he  had  a  son  born  to 
him  said,  if  the  child  should  live,  he  would  give  him  a 
public  education,  that  he  might  be  a  minister  or  a  sabbath- 
day-man,  alluding  to  my  being  born  on  the  sabbath." 

The  little  town  where  Hopkins's  father  was  a 
farmer,  was,  he  records,  a  place  "  where  a  regard  to 
religion  and  morality  was  common  and  prevalent  ";' 
to  how  great  a  degree  may  be  imagined  from  his 
further  statement:2  '"  I  do  not  recollect  that  I  ever 
heard  a  prophane  word  from  the  children  and  youth, 
with  whom  I  was  conversant,  while  I  lived  with  my 
parents,  which  was  till  I  was  in  my  fifteenth  year." 

Here  the  boy  grew  up,  tall  and  heavily  built,  "  of  a 
sober  and  steady  make,"  he  said  of  himself,  "  not 
guilty  of  external  irregularities,  .  .  .  disposed  to 
be  diligent  and  faithful  in  ...  business,"  so  that 
he  "  gained  the  notice,  esteem,  and  respect  of  the 
neighbourhood."3  He  had  "sometimes,  though 
rarely  .  .  .  some  serious  thoughts  of  God,"  and 

"in  the  seventy-fifth  year  of  my  age,"  was  published  by  Rev.  Stephen 
West,  of  Stockbridge,  in  Sketches  of  the  Life  of  the  Late  Rev.  Samuel 
Hopkins,  D.D.,  etc.,  Hartford,  1805.     The  quotation  is  from  pp.  23,  24. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  24. 

p.  25.  *Ibid. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  317 

a  dream  in  which  his  youthful  fancy  pictured  himself 
as  "  sentenced  to  everlasting  misery,  and  driven  down 
to  hell,  with  the  rest  of  the  wicked,"  made  an  impres- 
sion on  him  that  was  vivid  even  to  old  age. 

At  fourteen,  the  serious-minded,  reserved,  and  taci- 
turn boy  went  from  his  father's  home  to  the  house  of 
Rev.  John  Graham,  the  Scotch-born  pastor  at  South- 
bury,  ten  miles  from  the  Waterbury  farm,  to  be  fitted 
for  college;  and  two  years  later,  in  1737,  he  entered 
Yale.  Of  his  course  there  he  has  recorded  the  follow- 
ing description : ' 

"  While  a  member  of  the  college,  I  believe,  I  had  the 
character  of  a  sober,  studious  youth,  and  of  a  better  scholar 
than  the  bigger  half  of  the  members  of  that  society;  and 
had  the  approbation  of  the  governours  of  the  college.  I 
avoided  the  intimacy  and  the  company  of  the  openly 
vicious;  and  indeed  kept  but  little  company,  being  atten- 
tive to  my  studies.  In  the  eighteenth  or  nineteenth  year 
of  my  age,  I  cannot  now  certainly  determine  which,  I  made 
a  profession  of  religion,  and  joined  the  church  to  which  my 
parents  belonged  in  Waterbury.  I  was  serious,  and  was 
thought  to  be  a  pious  youth,  and  I  had  this  thought  and 
hope  of  myself.  I  was  constant  in  reading  the  bible,  and 
in  attending  on  public  and  secret  religion.  And  sometimes 
at  night,  in  my  retirement  and  devotion,  when  I  thought 
of  confessing  the  sins  I  had  been  guilty  of  that  day,  and 
asking  pardon,  I  could  not  recollect  that  I  had  committed 
one  sin  that  day.  Thus  ignorant  was  I  of  my  own  heart, 
and  of  the  spirituality,  strictness,  and  extent  of  the  divine 
law." 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  27,  28. 


318  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

But  this  degree  of  Christian  experience,  although 
equaling  in  depth  that  which  many  a  theological 
student  then  or  now  could  honestly  claim,  soon  came 
to  appear  wholly  inadequate  to  the  young  collegian. 
Whitefield  preached  his  stirring  discourses  in  New 
Haven  just  as  Hopkins's  Senior  year  was  beginning; 
and  Gilbert  Tennent,  fresh  from  his  revival  labors  at 
Boston,  delivered  "  seventeen  sermons  "  in  "  about  a 
week,"  ;<  with  a  remarkable  and  mighty  power," 
during  the  spring  before  Hopkins's  graduation.1 

Under  Tennent's  fiery  discourses  "  many  cried  out 
with  distress  and  horror  of  mind,  under  a  conviction 
of  God's  anger,  and  .  .  .  many  professors  of  re- 
ligion received  conviction  that  they  were  not  real 
Christians.  .  .  .  The  members  of  college  appeared 
to  be  universally  awakened."  Several  of  Hopkins's 
fellow  students,  his  classmates  Samuel  Buell  and 
David  Youngs,  with  David  Brainerd  of  the  then 
Sophomore  class,  "  visited  every  room  in  college,  and 
discoursed  freely  and  with  the  greatest  plainness  with 
each  one."  a 

Hopkins  himself  heartily  approved  these  efforts 
and  believed  himself  a  Christian,  till  Brainerd,  in 
the  exercise  of  this  student  evangelism  in  which  he 
was  a  leader,  came  to  Hopkins  for  an  account  of 
that  reticent  scholar's  religious  state.  Hopkins  gave 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  30-32. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  319 

no  hint  of  his  lack  of  such  religious  experiences 
as  Brainerd  thought  were  alone  evidences  of  a 
regenerate  condition;  but,  none  the  less,  Brainerd's 
assertion  that  it  was  "  impossible  for  a  person  to  be 
converted  and  to  be  a  real  Christian  without  feeling 
his  heart,  at  sometimes  at  least,  sensibly  and  greatly 
affected  with  the  character  of  Christ,"  "  struck  con- 
viction "  through  him.  To  the  distressed  and  honest 
student  it  seemed,  as  it  did  to  the  aged  minister,  who 
thus  recorded  his  youthful  experiences,  that  he  "  was 
indeed  no  Christian,"  but  "a  guilty,  justly  condemned 
creature,"  whose  "  condition  appeared  darker  from 
day  to  day."  Even  a  sudden  and  overwhelming 
"  sense  of  the  being  and  presence  of  God  .  .  . 
and  the  character  of  Jesus  Christ  the  mediator,"  which 
came  to  him  one  evening  as  he  meditated  and  prayed 
alone,  flooding  his  soul  with  a  new  consciousness  of 
the  blessedness  of  communion  with  God,  while  reveal- 
ing his  own  unworthiness,  did  not  dispel  this  feeling 
of  lack  of  any  saving  change  of  nature;  though  the 
aged  Hopkins,  as  he  reviewed  this  experience,  mar- 
veled that  he  did  not  then  recognize  in  it  his  conver- 
sion.1 

Hopkins  was  now  twenty  years  of  age.  From  his 
first  listening  to  Tennent  he  had  determined  to  seek 
him  out  and  if  possible  live  with  that  fervent  evangel- 
ist as  soon  as  college  days  were  over ;  but  a  sermon  by 

'West,  Sketches,  pp.  33-37. 


32O  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

Jonathan  Edwards  on  "  the  trial  of  the  spirits,"  heard 
at  New  Haven  just  before  graduation,  turned  Hop- 
kins's  preference  to  the  Northampton  minister,  and  he 
decided,  if  possible,  to  enjoy  Edwards's  personal  in- 
struction. It  was  characteristic  of  the  shy  and  reserved 
young  Senior  that,  though  thus  determined,  he  did  not 
speak  to  the  preacher  who  so  powerfully  moved  him.1 

Graduation  saw  Hopkins  once  more  in  his  boyhood 
home,  praying  and  fasting  and  "  dejected  and  very 
gloomy  in  mind  "  ;2  yet  he  took  some  part  in  attempts 
44  to  promote  religion  among  the  young  people  in  the 
town."  But,  by  the  December  following  the  Septem- 
ber commencement  when  he  received  his  degree,  Hop- 
kins had  reached  the  desired  Northampton  parsonage 
on  horseback,  unknown,  and  only  to  find  that  Ed- 
wards himself  was  absent  on  an  extended  evangelistic 
tour;  yet  welcomed  and  invited  to  spend  the  winter 
by  Mrs.  Edwards  and  her  household. 

Yet  he  could  have  been  no  cheerful  visitor.  '  I  was 
very  gloomy  and  was  most  of  the  time  retired  in  my 
chamber,"  he  recorded,  and  though  Mrs.  Edwards 
offered  spiritual  comfort  and  declared  to  him  her  belief 
that  "  God  intended  yet  to  do  great  things  "  by  him, 
"  this  conversation  did  not  sensibly  raise  [his]  spirits  in 
the  least  degree. "  Nor  did  he  admit  a  trembling  hope 
that  he  might,  after  all,  be  one  of  the  children  of  God, 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  37,  38. 

8  For  the  facts  in  this  paragraph,  see  Ibid.,  pp.  38-43. 


SAMUEL   HOPKINS  $21 

till  his  classmate,  Samuel  Buell,  had  greatly  stirred 
Northampton  in  January,  1742,  and  Mrs.  Edwards  had 
passed  through  her  high-wrought  experience  in  con- 
scious submission  to  the  divine  will,  even  to  a  readiness 
to  be  with  the  lost  forever.1  And  even  when,  after  Ed- 
wards's  return,  the  self-distrustful  young  man  had 
related  the  reasons  for  his  hesitatingly  admitted  belief 
to  the  Northampton  pastor,  it  was  with  no  expectation 
of  receiving  full  assurance.  Edwards  "  gave  not  his 
opinion  expressly  ;  nor  did  I  desire  he  should,"  Hop- 
kins later  recorded  with  transparent  honesty,  "  for  I 
was  far  from  relying  on  any  man's  judgment  in  such  a 
case.  But  I  supposed  he  entertained  a  hope  that  I 
was  a  Christian."  Nor  did  Hopkins  ever  wholly  rid 
himself  of  the  fear  that  he  had  been  self-deceived  in 
the  fundamental  matter  of  his  conversion.  One  of 
the  most  pathetic  memorials  of  his  experience  is  the 
concluding  portion  of  his  autobiographic  sketches,  in 
which  the  worn  servant  of  God,  then  more  than 
seventy-eight  years  of  age,  and  able  to  look  back  on  a 
ministry  of  fifty-six  years'  duration,  sums  up  with 
hesitating  judgment  the  evidences  that  point  to  the 
reality  of  his  Christian  life,  and  those  which  "  some- 
times are  the  ground  of  strong  suspicion  and  doubt 
whether  [he  is]  a  real  friend  to  Christ." 

Doubtless  much  of  this  self-distrust  was  tempera- 
mental in  Hopkins;  but  much  also  was  characteristic 

}  Ante,  pp.  238-40.  8West,  Sketches,  pp.  113-131. 


322  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

of  the  school  of  religious  thought  which  he  repre- 
sented, viewing  conversion,  as  it  did,  as  involving  the 
mightiest  exercise  of  the  sovereign  and  selective  grace 
of  God,  and  looking  upon  the  human  heart  not  only 
as  infinite  in  its  depth  of  wickedness,  but  wellnigh 
infinite,  also,  in  its  possibilities  of  self-deception. 

Yet,  though  self-distrustful,  a  few  weeks  in  Ed- 
wards's  home  had  determined  Hopkins  to  preach  the 
Gospel.  Accordingly,  on  April  29,  1/42,  less  than 
eight  months  after  graduating  from  Yale,  he  sought 
and  received  licensure  from  the  Fairfield  East  Associa- 
tion of  his  native  colony;1  and,  returning  to  North- 
ampton, assisted  Edwards  in  pastoral  labors  and 
preached  in  neighboring  towns.2  December  brought 
an  invitation  to  Simsbury,  Conn.,  and  a  winter  of 
preaching  there  was  followed  by  a  call  to  the  Sims- 
bury  pastorate.  But  the  fact  that  thirty  votes  were 
cast  against  the  proposition  induced  Hopkins  to  de- 
cline, and  he  went  back  to  the  friendly  household  at 
Northampton  for  further  study  in  theology.  North- 
ampton air  did  not  agree  with  him,  and  the  long 
horseback  rides  suggested  as  a  remedy  for  his  rheu- 
matic ills  led  the  young  preacher,  in  July,  1743,  to 
the  frontier  Berkshire  village  then  known  as  Housa- 
tonick,  but  more  familiar  under  its  later  name,  Great 
Barrington.  It  was  a  discouraging  little  half-New 

1  F.  B.  Dexter,  Biog.  Sketches  of  the  Grad.  of  Yah  College,  i.,  p.  671. 

2  West,  Sketches,  pp.  45-48. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  323 

England,  half-Dutch  parish  of  thirty  families,  of  small 
worldly  wealth,  and  of  the  lax  religious  and  social 
habits  which  life  on  the  verge  of  civilization  always 
fosters.  But  the  Great  Barrington  people  gave  a 
unanimous  invitation  to  Hopkins  to  become  their 
pastor,  and  here  he  was  ordained,  as  he  records,  "  on 
the  28th  day  of  December,  just  at  the  end  of  the  year 
1743,  when  [he]  was  twenty-two  years,  three  months, 
and  eleven  days  old." 

Here,  at  Great  Barrington,  four  years  after  his 
ordination,  Hopkins  married  a  member  of  his  congre- 
gation, Joanna  Ingersoll,1  whose  twenty  years  of  severe 
invalidism,  ending  in  her  death  in  1793,  added  its 
burden  of  care  and  of  sorrow  to  much  of  his  ministry.2 
Here  his  five  sons  and  three  daughters  were  born. 
Here,  too,  he  enjoyed  for  nearly  seven  years,  from 
1751  to  1758,  the  close  companionship  of  his  revered 
friend  and  teacher,  Jonathan  Edwards,  whose  call  to 
the  neighboring  Stockbridge,  only  seven  miles  from 
his  home,  was  procured  by  Hopkins's  endeavors;  and 
here  also  he  enjoyed  throughout  his  ministry  the 
friendship  of  that  other  eminent  disciple  of  Edwards, 
Joseph  Bellamy,  of  Bethlehem,  Conn.  How  influ- 
ential this  companionship  with  Edwards  must  have 
been  for  his  younger  admirer  will  readily  be  conjec- 
tured when  it  is  remembered  that  Edwards's  more 

1  West,  Sketches,  p.  54.     Married  January  13,  1748. 
3  Ibid.,  pp.  82,  83.     Died  August  31,  1793. 


324  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

important  treatises  were  talked  over  with  Hopkins  and 
written  during  their  author's  Stockbridge  pastorate, 
and  that  after  Edwards's  untimely  death  his  manu- 
scripts were  confided  to  Hopkins's  keeping.  Nor 
was  the  friendship  of  the  elder  divine  unrewarded 
by  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  the  younger,  It  was  Hop- 
kins's refusal  of  the  Stockbridge  appointment,  and  of 
the  handsome  increase  in  his  income  that  it  implied, 
in  order  that  he  might  urge  the  selection  of  his  friend, 
that  opened  the  way  for  Edwards's  settlement.1 

Personally,  the  Great  Barrington  pastor  was,  and 
remained  through  his  long  life,  a  man  of  many 
peculiarities.  "  I  have  loved  retirement,"  said 
Hopkins  in  his  old  age,  "  and  have  taken  more  pleas- 
ure alone,  than  in  any  company :  And  have  often 
chosen  to  ride  alone,  when  on  a  journey,  rather  than 
, in  the  best  company."  Every  Saturday  he  spent, 
when  possible,  "  in  retirement,  and  in  fasting  and 
prayer."  His  breakfast  and  his  supper  alike,  on  days 
not  given  to  fasting,  consisted  of  "  bread  and  milk, 
from  a  bowl  containing  about  three  "gills,  never  vary- 
ing from  that  quantity,  whether  his  appetite  required 
more  or  not  so  much  "—a  diet  which  he  changed  dur- 
ing his  later  Newport  years,  as  far  as  breakfast  was  con- 
cerned, for  "  a  cup  of  coffee  and  a  little  Indian  bread." 

1   West,  Sketches,  p.  54.  *  Ibid.,  p.  86. 

3  William  Patten,  Reminiscences  of  Late  Rev.  Samuel  Hopkins,  1843, 
quoted  in  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  52,  242. 


SAMUEL   HOPKINS  325 

Exercise  he  never  took,  save  as  his  pastoral  work 
brought  it  to  him;  but  from  fourteen  to  eighteen 
hours  a  day  were  spent  in  his  study,  beginning  at  four 
in  the  morning,  or  between  four  and  five  as  a  conces- 
jj°n  to  winter's  darkness^  and  cold.1  At  nine  every 
evening  he  ceased  work,  prayed  with  his  family,  and 
it  is  to  be  hoped  conversed  a  little,  for  he  could  dis- 
play much  humor  in  talking  with  those  who  penetrated 
beyond  his  barrier  of  reserve.2  At  ten  he  was  abed. 

Though  once  at  the  beginning  of  his  ministry,  and 
in  the  excitement  of  the  Whitefieldian  revival,  the 
congregation  at  Suffield  had  been  so  moved  that  he 
(<  could  not  be  heard  all  over  the  meeting-house,  by 
reason  of  the  outcries  of  the  people,"3  Hopkins  was 
esteemed  a  very  dull  preacher.  '  He  was  the  very 
ideal  of  bad  delivery,"  4  was  Channing's  comment  on 
his  pulpit  manner;  "  such  tones  never  came  from  any 
human  voice  within  my  hearing."  And  of  these  de- 
ficiencies Hopkins  himself  was  painfully  conscious. 
In  his  seventy-fifth  year  he  wrote:  "  My  preaching 
has  always  appeared  to  me  as  poor,  low,  and  miserable, 
compared  with  what  it  ought  to  be.  ...  I  have 
felt  often  as  if  I  must  leave  off,  and  never  attempt  any 

1  West,  Sketches,  p.  84. 

2  Park,  Memoir,  pp.    242,  243  ;  and  also  W.   E.  Channing,    Works, 
iv.,  pp.  347-354,  Boston,  1849,  a  biographic  note  of  very  great  value  for 
Hopkins's  appearance  in  his  Newport  old  age. 

3  West,  Sketches,  p.  44. 

4W.  E.  Channing,  Works,  iv..  p.  348. 


326  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

more."  '  Hopkins  labored  faithfully  to  overcome  his 
defects.  By  diligent  effort  he  freed  himself  from  the 
fully  written  manuscript;  but  he  never  attained  ease, 
animation,  or  effectiveness.  Yet  the  matter  of  his  dis- 
courses always  won  him  friends,  whose  "  satisfaction 
and  approbation  "  he  attributed  with  reason  as  well  as 
with  characteristic  modesty  "  to  their  high  relish  for 
the  truth,"  as  he  understood  it,  "  however  poor  and 
defective  the  delivery  and  exhibition  of  it  "  might  be. 
One  of  these  satisfied  hearers,  who  listened  to  a  chance 
sermon  from  the  aged  Hopkins,  delivered,  at  the  in- 
vitation of  Chauncy's  Arian  successor,  John  Clarke,  in 
what  had  been  Chauncy's  very  un-Hopkinsian  Boston 
pulpit,  presented  him  five  or  six  hundred  dollars  as 
an  expression  of  esteem  at  a  time  when  Hopkins's 
stipend  from  his  Newport  congregation  was  not  more 
than  two  hundred  dollars  a  year.8 

Hopkins  always  had  a  low  estimate  of  himself.  He 
walked  very  humbly  with  God,  and  with  great  devout- 
ness  of  spirit  and  practice.  His  pecuniary  generosity 
was  far  beyond  that  even  of  reputedly  devoted  minis- 
ters generally  in  that  self-denying  age,3  and  was  given 
from  a  penury  such  as  few  ministers  of  that  epoch  had 
to  endure.  "  I  have  taken  care  not  to  run  in  debt 
for  the  necessaries  of  life,"  wrote  Hopkins  in  1796, 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  88-92. 

2  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  233,  234. 

3  For  instances,  see  Channing,  Works,  iv.,  p.  349  ;  Park,  Memoir,  pp. 
94»  95  \  West,  Sketches,  pp.  xiv.,  xv. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  327 

'''  though  frequently  if  a  dollar  extraordinary  had 
been  called  for,  it  would  have  rendered  me  a  bank- 
rupt I  have  endeavored  to  live  as  cheap  and  low  as 
I  could,  and  be  comfortable,  and  answer  the  ends  of 
living  in  my  station  and  business."  1  His  comforts 
were  those  of  the  mind  rather  than  of  the  body;  and 
being  such  he  never  impressed  his  acquaintances  as  a 
really  poor  man.  '  He  was  an  illustration  of  the 
power  of  our  spiritual  nature,"  said  Channing,  speak- 
ing of  Hopkins's  old  age.8 

"  In  narrow  circumstances,  with  few  outward  indulgences, 
in  great  seclusion,  he  yet  found  much  to  enjoy.  He  lived 
in  a  world  of  thought  above  all  earthly  passions. 
It  has  been  my  privilege  to  meet  with  other  examples  of  the 
same  character,  with  men,  who,  amidst  privation,  under 
bodily  infirmity,  and  with  none  of  those  materials  of  enjoy- 
ment which  the  multitude  are  striving  for,  live  in  a  world 
of  thought,  and  enjoy  what  affluence  never  dreamed  of,— 
men  having  nothing,  yet  possessing  all  things;  and  the 
sight  of  such  has  done  me  more  good,  has  spoken  more  to 
my  head  and  heart,  than  many  sermons  and  volumes." 

But  with  all  his  humility,  of  one  thing  Hopkins  was 
confident  with  a  confidence  that  led  him  at  times  into 
arrogance  toward  or  contempt  for  an  opponent.  ;'  I 
had,  from  time  to  time,  some  opposers  of  the  doctrines 
which  I  preached,"  3  wrote  Hopkins,  ;<  but  being 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  79,  80. 

2  Channing,  Works,  iv.,  pp.  352,  353. 

3  West,  Sketches,  p.  60. 


328  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

persuaded,  and  knowing  that  they  were  the  truths 
contained  in  divine  revelation,  this  opposition,  from 
whatever  quarter,  did  not  in  the  least  deter  or  discour- 
age me."  He  believed  himself  called  of  God  to  write 
his  books,1  and  when  asked,  just  at  the  end  of  his  life, 
whether  he  would  "make  any  alteration  in  the  sen- 
timents" expressed  in  his  System  of  Divinity,  he 
answered,  "  No:  I  am  willing  to  rest  my  soul  on 
them  forever."8  This  confidence  he  imparted  to 
those  near  to  him.  When  the  wife  of  his  old  age,  who 
survived  him,  was  approached  with  a  suggestion  that 
an  abridged  edition  of  his  System  would  find  a  readier 
market  than  a  full  reprint,  she  answered:  "  If  the 
public  will  not  be  at  the  expense  of  printing  it  as  it  is, 
let  them  do  without  it  till  the  millennium ;  then  it  will 
be  read  and  published  with  avidity." 

The  mention  of  the  second  Mrs.  Hopkins  recalls  the 
fact  that  she  was  almost  as  well  read  in  theology  as 
he,  and  that  the  intellectual  bond  was  strong  between 
the  aged  husband  and  the  wife  of  his  later  days.  On 
September  14,  1794,  a  twelvemonth  after  his  first 
wife's  release  from  her  long  years  of  distressing  in- 
validism,  Hopkins  married  Miss  Elizabeth  West,  a 
member  of  his  Newport  congregation  and  a  much 
esteemed  teacher,  who  was  already  in  her  fifty-sixth 
year.  Hopkins  was  then  seventy-three.  But  much 

'Diary,  in  Park,  Memoir,  p.  197. 

'Park,  Memoir,  p.  232.  *  Ibid.,  p.  241. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  329 

more  than  an  intellectual  sympathy  united  them. 
Hopkins  was  always  kindly  and  considerate  in  his 
household,  and  his  affection  went  out  toward  his  wife 
with  a  warmth  which  even  the  technically  theological 
dress  of  its  expression  cannot  conceal,  as  he  wrote : l 

"I  .  .  .  esteem  it  as  one  of  the  greatest  favours  of 
my  life  to  have  such  a  companion  in  my  advanced  years, 
in  whose  prudence,  good  family  economy,  friendship,  and 
benevolent  care  I  can  confide;  and  who  is  to  me  the  first 
object  among  creatures,  of  the  love  of  esteem,  benevolence, 
complacency,  and  gratitude." 

In  glancing  thus  at  Hopkins's  personal  traits  we 
have  passed  beyond  the  limits  of  his  Great  Barrington 
ministry.  That  pastorate  was  one  of  trial.  The 
church,  formed  on  the  day  of  his  ordination,  began 
with  only  five  members,  to  whom  seventy-one  were 
added  by  confession  and  forty-five  by  letter  during 
his  service  of  almost  exactly  a  quarter  of  a  century.3 
But  the  town  was  divided.  Hopkins's  sympathy  with 
Edwards  in  opposition  to  the  popular  Stoddardeanism 
and  to  the  Half-Way  Covenant  cost  him  the  support 
of  many,  and  aided  in  the  establishment  in  1760  of 
an  Episcopal  church  in  his  parish  ;  while  Hopkins's 
patriotism  was  equally  distasteful  to  a  large  Tory 
element  as  the  controversies  preceding  the  Revolution 
ran  their  course.3 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  83,  84. 

2  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  35,  67.  *Ibid.,  pp.  67-72. 


330  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

But  his  theological  views  most  of  all  made  him 
enemies.  Strenuous,  like  his  teacher  and  friend  Ed- 
wards, in  asserting  not  merely  the  absolute  sovereignty 
of  God,  but  in  representing  every  act  of  that  sovereignty 
as  a  manifestation  of  a  benevolence  which  had  the  good 
of  the  universe  as  its  aim,  Hopkins  preached  a  sermon, 
in  1757,  having  as  its  theme,  "  The  Lord  Reigneth," 
which  seemed  to  a  parishioner  to  maintain  "  that  noth- 
ing could  possibly  happen  but  what  was  right  and 
ought  to  be  rejoiced  in,  because  all  was  exactly  as  God 
would  have  it,  even  events  the  most  vile."  To  the 
parishioner's  perplexed  thought  this  seemed  an  asser- 
tion that  "  God  and  the  devil  are  of  one  mind  " ;  and 
the  parishioner  announced  his  intention  of  procuring,  if 
possible,  the  dismission  of  a  pastor  who  preached  such 
doctrine.1  This  discussion  led  Hopkins  to  the  publica- 
tion, in  1759,  of  his  first  doctrinal  treatise,  under  the 
caption  : 2  Sin,  thro'  Divine  Interposition,  an  Advantage 
to  the  Universe  ;  and  yet,  this  no  Excuse  for  Sin,  or  En- 
couragement to  it ;  a  title,  said  Hopkins,  writing  thirty- 
seven  years  later,  "  so  shocking  to  many  that  they 
would  read  no  farther."  3 

In  this  treatise  Hopkins  maintained  the  following 
principles : 4 

"  The  Holiness  of  God  primarily  consists  in  LOVE, 
or  Benevolence  to  himself,  and  to  the  Creature;  in  the 

1  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  68,  69.  2  Published  at  Boston. 

'West,  Sketches,  p.  93.  4Ed.  of  1759,  pp.  45,  46. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  331       __. 

Exercise  of  which,  he  seeks  his  own  Glory,  and  the  Happi- 
ness of  the  Creature;  or,  in  one  Word,  he  seeks  the  Good  of 
the  UNIVERSE,  as  comprehending  both  Creator  and  Crea- 
tures. And  this  God  aimed  at  and  sought  in  permitting 
Sin,  as  much  as  in  any  Act  whatever;  and  therefore  this 
was  an  Exercise  of  Holiness,  even  to  permit  Sin.  For 
God  permitted  Sin,  because  he  saw  that  this  was  the  best 
way  to  promote  this  End,  and  accomplish  the  highest  Good 
of  the  Universe.  .  .  .  The  greatest  Good  of  the  Whole, 
may  be  inconsistent  with  the  Good  of  every  Individual. 
God  may  be  more  glorified;  yea,  there  may  be 
more  Happiness  among  Creatures,  than  if  Sin  had  never 
taken  Place.  For  tho  Sin  is  the  Means  of  the  eternal 
Misery  of  many,  yet  it  may  be  the  Means  of  increasing  the 
Happiness  of  others  to  so  great  a  Degree,  as  that,  upon  the 
whole,  there  shall  be  more  Happiness,  than  if  there  had 
been  no  Sin.  .  .  .  They  who  are  made  miserable  by 
Sin,  are  justly  miserable.  Sin  is  their  own  Fault;  and  for 
it  they  deserve  eternal  Destruction;  and  therefore  God 
does  them  no  Wrong  in  casting  them  into  Hell;  they  have 
but  their  Desert.  .  .  .  God  exercises  Severity  towards 
some;  but  't  is  a  just  Severity  ;  'T  is  as  just  as  if  no  Good 
came  to  others  by  Means  of  Sin." 

This  was  strong  meat;  though  it  involved  little  that 
was  not  implied  in  the  thoughts  of  Edwards,  or,  in- 
deed, that  was  not  characteristic  of  the  severer  type  of 
Calvinism  generally.  But  it  was  speedily  followed  by 
a  further  application  of'  Edwardean  principles  that 
brought  Hopkins  into  sharp  conflict  with  much  of 
the  Old,  or  "  Moderate  "  Calvinism  of  his  day.  In  a 
preceding  lecture  it  has  been  pointed  out  that  eigh- 
teenth-century New  England  Calvinism  of  the  older 


332  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

school,  as  distinguished  from  the  "  New  Divinity  "  of 
Edwards  and  his  sympathizers,  though  asserting  that 
salvation  was  wholly  a  work  of  the  sovereign  grace  of 
God  which  man  can  in  no  way  effect,  nevertheless 
held  that  by  the  use  of  "  means,"  such  as  attendance 
of  public  worship,  reading  the  Scriptures,  strenuous 
uprightness  of  conduct,  and  prayer,  unregenerate  men 
could  put  themselves  in  a  position  where  God  was 
more  likely  to  save  them.  Such  earnest  and  upright 
men,  though  guilty  before  God  and  needing  a  spiritual 
new  birth  for  salvation,  were  not  so  guilty  as  if  they 
lived  in  open  contempt  of  God's  ordinances. 

This  widely  prevalent  view,  characteristic  of  eigh- 
teenth-century Old  Calvinism,  was  pushed  further  by 
some.  In  1744,  the  missionary  to  the  Indians  of 
Martha's  Vineyard,  Experience  Mayhew,  argued,  in 
his  Grace  Defended,  that  "  the  best  Actions  of  the 
Unregenerate  are  not  properly  called  Sins,  nor  uncap- 
able  of  being  Conditions  of  the  Covenant  of  Grace," 
his  view  being  very  similar  to  that  of  Samuel  Phillips3 
of  Andover,  that  a  faithful  use  of  the  "means  of  grace  " 
would  fulfill  the  conditions  on  which  God  was  pleased  to 
bestow  that  special  favor  which  alone  brings  salvation. 
These  principles  were  carried  yet  further  by  those  of 
the  New  England  ministry  who  were  not  Calvinists. 
Thus  Chauncy,  for  instance,  declared  in  a  passage  al- 
ready quoted  from  his  volume  of  Twelve  Sermons,  pub- 

1  Page  148.  2See  Ante,  p.  231. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  333 

lished  in  1765,  that  God  "  no  more  ordinarily  BEGINS, 
than  carries  on  the  work  of  faith,  as  it  respects  it's  exis- 
tence and  operation  in  the  hearts  of  sinners,  without 
the  concurring  use  of  their  powers  and  endeavours."  l 
But  the  immediate  occasion  of  Hopkins's  first  con- 
troversial pamphlet  on  the  means  of  grace  was  the 
publication,  in  1761,  of  two  sermons2  by  Experience 
Mayhew's  un-Calvinistic  and  Arian  son,  Jonathan,  the 
pastor  of  the  West  Church  in  Boston,  in  which  he  as- 
serted that  regeneration  is  conditioned  on  the  earnest 
efforts  of  good  men  to  obtain  it.  Four  years  later, 
Hopkins  answered  these  sermons  with  An  Enquiry 
Concerning  the  Promises  of  the  Gospel,  whether  any  of 
them  are  made  to  the  Exercises  and  Doings  of  persons  in 
an  Unregenerate  State*  To  Hopkins's  thinking/ 

"  the  impenitent  sinner,  who  continues  obstinately  to  reject 
and  oppose  the  salvation  offered  in  the  gospel,  does  in  some 
respects,  yea,  on  the  whole,  become,  not  less,  but  more 
vicious  and  guilty  in  God's  sight,  the  more  instruction  and 
knowledge  he  gets  in  attendance  on  the  means  of  grace." 

Hence,  in  Hopkins's  judgment,  such  preaching  as 
that  of  Mayhew  was  radically  wrong.5 

"  Instead  of  calling  upon  all  to  repent  and  believe  the 
gospel,  as  the  only  condition  of  God's  favor  and  eternal 

1  Twelve  Sermons,  p.  195. 

2  Striving  to  Enter  in  at  the  strait  Gate  Explained  and  Inculcated 'j 
and  the  Connection  of  Salvation  therewith  Proved.     Boston,  1761. 

3  Boston,  1765. 

*  Enquiry,  pp.  124,  125.  5  Ibid.,  pp.  99,  139,  140. 


334  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

life,  the  most  they  [such  preachers]  do,  with  relation  to 
unregenerate  sinners,  is  to  exhort  and  urge  them  to  these 
doings  which  are  short  of  repentance.  .  .  .  There  is 
no  difficulty  in  the  sinner's  complying  with  the  offers  of 
the  gospel,  but  what  lies  in  his  want  of  an  inclination  and 
true  desire  to  accept  the  salvation  offered;  and  a  strong 
and  obstinate  inclination  to  the  contrary." 

Means  the  sinner  must  use;  for  the  means  of  grace 
give  "  speculative  or  doctrinal  knowledge  "  of  truth, 
and  "  there  can  be  no  discerning  of  the  beauty  of 
those  objects,  of  which  the  mind  has  no  speculative 
idea."  But  the  use  of  means,  without  the  full  sub- 
mission of  the  heart  to  God,  only  adds  guilt.  God 
has  made  "  no  promises  of  regenerating  grace  or  salva- 
tion ...  to  the  exercises  and  doing  of  unregener- 
ate men."  1  Sinners,  while  they  remain  sinners,  have 
no  share  in  any  promise  of  the  Gospel.  Their  prayers, 
their  apprehensions  of  sin,  their  diligence  in  studying 
God's  Word,  and  attendance  upon  God's  worship  are 
but  aggravations  of  their  guilt.  They  have  the  natural 
ability  instantly  to  repent  and  serve  God. 

Hopkins's  denial  that  there  were  any  promises  to  the 
unregenerate  led  him  to  a  negation  which  must  have 
seemed  to  the  thinking  of  his  own  age  even  more 
startling  —  a  denial  that  there  are  "  any  promises  in 
the  bible  to  regeneration  itself,  or  to  the  regenerate, 
antecedent  to  any  exercise  of  holiness,  but  only  to 
those  exercises  which  are  the  fruit  and  consequence  of 

1  Enquiry,  pp.  81,  123,  124. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  335        

regeneration."  1  This  statement  gives  us  a  glimpse 
of  another  feature  of  the  theology  of  Hopkins,  based 
indeed  on  the  Edwardean  theories  of  will  and  of 
virtue,  but  much  more  definitely  elaborated  than  by 
Edwards.  In  Hopkins's  view,  as  set  forth  in  the  En- 
quiry under  consideration,  and  even  more  fully  in  Two 
Discourses?  preached  originally  at  Ipswich,  Mass.,3 
and  printed  in  1768,  praise  and  blame,  sin  and 
righteousness  attach  to  acts,  or  "  exercises  of  the 
mind."  For  the  character  of  these  acts  man  is 
responsible  ;  but  they  root  themselves  back  in  a 
'  biass,"  "  heart,"  "  taste,  temper,  or  disposition," 
from  which  they  flow.  Yet  of  itself,  and  in  its  passive 
state,  that  bias  gives  no  moral  quality  to  its  possessor ; 
it  is  only  to  acts  and  " exercises"  that  moral  values 
apply.  What  that  "  biass  "  may  be  in  itself  "  ante- 
cedent to  all  thought,"  Hopkins  declares  difficult  to 
conceive,  though  he  drops  a  hint  that  shows  an  in- 
clination toward  the  views  later  elaborated  by  Em- 
mons,  when  he  intimates  that  it  "is  wholly  to  be 
resolved  into  divine  constitution  or  law  of  nature."  5 
Now,  in  regeneration,  this  "biass  "  which  results  in  acts 

1  Enquiry,  p.  54. 

2  Two  Discourses — /.   On  the  Necessity  of  the  Knowledge  of  the  Law 
of  God,  in  Order  to  the  Knowledge  of  Sin.    II.  A  Particular  and  Critical 
Inquiry  into  the  Cause,  Nature,  and  Means  of  that  Change  in  which  Men 
are  Born  of  God.     Boston,  1768. 

8  Letter  to  Bellamy,  in  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  190,,  200.     The  sermons 
were  preached  in  the  summer  of  1767.  ^Enqinry,  pp.  77,  79. 

5  Two  Discourses,  p.  38  ;  compare  also  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  191,  200. 


336  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

of  evil,  is  changed,  "  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  immediately 
and  instantaneously,  and  altogether  imperceptibly 
to  the  person  who  is  the  subject  of  it,"  into  "  a  new 
and  opposite  '  biass,'  which  is  by  our  Saviour  called 
an  honest  and  good  heart."  In  this  transaction  "  man, 
the  subject,  is  wholly  passive,"  a  but  having  this  new 
"  biass  "  his  acts  or  "  exercises  "  go  out  freely  God  ward 
in  an  active  "  conversion,"  and  "  all  the  promises  of 
the  gospel  are  made  to  these  exercises  of  the  mind  " 
which  has  thus  been  renewed  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 

These  may  seem  scholastic  distinctions;  but  in  real- 
ity they  were  concerned  with  matters  of  great  practical 
importance,  and,  being  so,  they  plunged  their  author 
into  as  heated  a  controversy  as  any  that  eighteenth- 
century  New  England  witnessed.  Let  us  put  the 
problem  in  a  more  concrete  form.  Let  us  suppose  the 
case,  familiar  in  the  experience  of  every  New  England 
congregation,  of  a  man  of  high  repute  in  the  commun- 
ity, upright,  a  good  citizen,  a  regular  attendant  upon 
and  supporter  of  public  worship,  a  reader  of  the  Bible, 
habitual  in  prayer  it  may  be,  but  not  consciously  or  in 
public  repute  a  Christian.  You  have  most  of  you  seen 
him  oftentimes.  Sedate,  honest,  reputable,  very 
probably  interested  in  philanthropic  or  moral  reform, 
regularly  in  his  pew,  and  his  children  regularly  in  the 
Sunday-school,  he  is  very  likely  the  main  pillar  in 

1  Enquiry,  pp.  78,  79.  2  Two  Discourses,  p.  38. 

*  Enquiry,  p.  77. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  337 

the  ecclesiastical  society,  and  he  is  also  apt  to  be  the 
problem  which  most  perplexes  the  minister  in  seasons 
of  religious  interest. 

Now  is  such  a  man  really  better  or  worse  than  one 
who  treats  religion  with  open  scorn  ?  Hopkins  answers 
that  he  is  much  worse.  It  is  his  "  indispensable  duty," 
his  "  highest  interest  immediately  to  repent.  .  .*  . 
Nothing  can  possibly  be  the  least  excuse  for  [his] 
neglecting  it  one  minute";1  and  all  exhortations  to 
effort,  all  prayer,  all  knowledge  of  truth,  if  this  primal 
duty  is  undone,  are  but  aggravations  of  guilt;  for 
"  there  is  no  difficulty  in  the  sinner's  complying  with 
the  offers  of  the  gospel,  but  what  lies  in  his  want  of 
inclination  "  2  to  do  so. 

Yet  if  such  a  man  is  perfectly  free  to  accept  or  reject 
the  Gospel  if  he  will,  is  this  then  a  haphazard  world 
where  God  does  not  rule  absolutely,  and  where  He  is 
uncertain  or  even  undeterminating  as  to  what  His  crea- 
tures shall  do  ?  Not  at  all,  says  Hopkins.  Though  the 
man  is  free,  he  is  free  only  in  the  sense  that  he  follows 
his  inclinations.  His  acts  are  good  or  bad,  and  as  such 
deserve  praise  or  blame.  But  back  of  the  acts  lies  a  taste 
or  propensity  which  in  all  natural  men  since  Adam  has 
made  it  certain  that  all  their  acts  would,  though  free, 
be  evil,  till  that  bias  is  changed  by  the  sovereign 
power  of  God.  The  man  of  our  supposition  may 
serve  God  if  he  will,  he  is  infinitely  guilty  that  he  does 

1  Two  Discourses,  p.  65.  9  Enquiry,  p.  99. 


338  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

not  do  so ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  will  not  serve 
God  till  he  is  born  again,  because  till  then  he  has  no 
inclination  to  do  so. 

So  fundamental  is  the  divine  control  that  not  only 
is  all  virtue  the  product  of  the  divine  Spirit,  but1 

"  there  appears  to  be  no  rational  or  consistent  medium, 
between  admitting  that  God,  according  to  the  scriptures, 
has  chosen  and  determined  that  all  the  moral  evil  which 
does,  or  ever  will  exist,  should  take  place,  and  consequently 
is  so  far  the  origin  and  cause  of  it  ;  Or  believing  and  as- 
serting, that  sin  has  taken  place,  in  every  view,  and  in  all 
respects,  contrary  to  his  will,  he  having  done  all  that  he 
could  to  prevent  the  existence  of  it;  but  was  not  able;  and 
is  therefore  not  the  infinitely  happy,  uncontrollable,  supreme 
Governor  of  the  world  ;  but  is  dependent,  disappointed 
and  miserable." 

Hence  the  duty  of  a  minister  is  to  preach  instant 
and  complete  repentance,  and  the  guilt  of  all  who  do 
not  exercise  this  grace,  while  recognizing  that  God 
will  carry  out  His  sovereign  purpose  in  granting  or 
withholding  that  "  new  heart  "  which  alone  makes 
repentance  actual. 

By  the  time  that  the  Two  Discourses  that  have  just 
been  considered  were  published,  in  1768,  Hopkins's 
own  situation  at  Great  Barrington  was  one  of  much 
difficulty.  Opposition,  partly  from  Tories  and  partly 
from  doctrinal  antagonists,  made  it  very  hard  for  him 
to  gain  even  a  meagre  pecuniary  support.  Hopkins 

1  System,  ed.  1811,  i.,  p.  162. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  339 

himself  felt  that  he  had  "  had  no  great  apparent  suc- 
cess in  the  ministry."  And  as  a  result  of  all  these 
influences,  on  January  18,  1769,  he  was  dismissed  from 
his  pastoral  charge.  The  outlook  was,  indeed,  gloomy 
from  his  point  of  view.  Feeling  between  theological 
parties  in  New  England  was  bitter,  and  Hopkins  had 
won  the  hostility  not  only  of  the  Liberals  of  the  day, 
but  of  the  Old  Calvinists,  a  much  more  important 
factor  in  New  England  religious  life.  Moreover,  he 
was  determined  not  to  settle  over  any  church,  the  mem- 
bers of  which  did  not  appear  to  his  strenuous  judg- 
ment, "  at  least  a  good  number  of  them,  to  be  real 
Christians"  And  he  recorded  his  opinion  that  "  it  was 
not  probable  that  such  a  Church  could  be  found."  It 
seemed  to  him  that  he  would  have  to  live  as  a  farmer 
on  the  bit  of  land  that  he  owned  at  Great  Barrington. 
But  not  even  the  personal  trials  just  spoken  of 
could  keep  Hopkins  from  writing  in  defense  of  the 
views  which  he  believed  to  be  the  truth  of  God.  His 
reply  to  Mayhew  had  drawn  out  an  answer  from  the 
venerable  and  revivalistic  minister  at  what  is  now 
Huntington,  Conn.,  Rev.  Jedidiah  Mills,2  in  1767; 

1  For  the  facts  in  this  paragraph  see  Hopkins's  autobiography,  West, 
Sketches,  pp.  49,  50,  60. 

2  An  Inquiry  concerning  the  State  of  the   Unregenerate   under   the 
Gospel ;  whether  on  every  rising  degree  of  internal  Light,   Conviction 
and  Amendment  of  Life,  they  are  (while  unregenerate)  undoubtedly,  on 
the  whole,  more  vile,  odious  and  abominable  (in  God^s  sight)  than  they 
•would  have  been  had  they  continued  secure  and  at  ease,  going  on  in  their 
sins.     New  Haven,  1767. 


340  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

and  also  during  the  same  year  from  the  scholarly  Old 
Calvinist,  Moses  Hemmenway,  of  Wells,  Me. ;  the 
latter  pamphlet  bearing  the  suggestive  title,  Seven  Ser- 
mons on  the  Obligation  and  Encouragement  of  the  Un- 
regenerate  to  labour  for  the  Meat  which  endureth  to 
everlasting  Life. 1 

In  the  view  of  the  first  named  of  these  able  and 
worthy  divines  in  particular,  Hopkins's  denial  of  any 
divine  promise  to  "unregenerate  doings  "  appeared  not 
merely  an  erroneous  but  a  dangerous  perversion  of  the 
Gospel,  to  which  the  devil  "  puts  his  hearty  Amen." 
To  the  task  of  answering  Mills,  Hopkins  set  himself 
immediately  after  his  dismission,  while  still  living  at 
Great  Barrington;  and  the  result  was  a  sturdy  little 
volume,  printed  at  New  Haven  in  1769,  under  the  title, 
The  true  State  and  Character  of  the  Unregenerate, 
stripped  of  all  Misrepresentation  and  Disguise,  in  which 
Hopkins  repeated,  expanded,  and  reenforced  the  argu- 
ments of  his  previous  Enquiry,  in  a  tone  of  a  good 
deal  of  arrogance  and  bitterness.  That  "  severity," 
as  he  later  described  it,  some  of  his  friends  deprecated, 
since  in  their  judgment,  as  well  as  that  of  Hopkins 
himself,  Mills  "  was  a  good  man,  and  had  done  much 
good,"  and  in  his  old  age  Hopkins  came  to  believe  that 
his  friends  were  right,  although  he  declared  that  he 
had  "  had  no  perception  "  of  personal  animus  when 
writing.2  One  is  not  surprised  to  find  that  Hopkins 

1  Boston,  1767.  2  West,  Sketches,  p.  96. 


SAMUEL   HOPKINS  341 

seemed  to  a  liberal  theologian  like  Chauncy  "  a  trouble- 
some, conceited,  obstinate  man  ";l  or  that  Chauncy, 
in  Hopkins's  view,  was  the  standard  of  ''all  the  uncir- 
cumcised  in  and  about  Boston."  2  Neither  was  correct 
in  his  estimate  of  the  other;  but  these  mutually  con- 
demnatory judgments  show  the  theological  animosities 
of  the  time. 

Hopkins's  writings  roused  strenuous  opposition.  An 
evidence  of  this  hostility  appeared  in  the  severe 
criticism  of  his  views  put  forth  in  1769  by  one  of 
the  most  respected  and  talented  men  in  the  Con- 
necticut ministry  of  that  day,  the  vigorous  Old 
Calvinist,  Rev.  William  Hart  of  Saybrook,  under  the 
title,  Brief  Remarks  on  a  number  of  False  Propositions, 
and  Dangerous  Errors,  which  are  spreading  in  the 
Country;  Collected  out  of  sundry  Discourses  lately  pub- 
lish d,  wrote  by  Dr.  Whitaker  and  Mr.  Hopkins*  And, 
not  content  with  this  attack,  Hart  stirred  Hopkins  by 
an  anonymous  satirical  pamphlet  of  the  same  year, 
purporting  to  be  A  Sermon  of  a  New  Kind,  Never 
preached ;  nor  ever  will  be  ;  Containing  a  Collection  of 
Doctrines,  belonging  to  the  Hopkintonian  Scheme  of 
Orthodoxy;  or  the  Marrow  of  the  Most  Modern  Divinity. 
And  an  Address  to  the  Unregenerate,  agreeable  to  the 
Doctrines." 

1  Letter  to  Stiles  of  November  14,  1769,  in  the  possession  of  Yale 
University. 

2  Letter  to  Bellamy  of  July  23,  1767,  quoted  in  Park,  Memoir,  p.  133. 

3  New  London,  1769.  4  New  Haven,  1769. 


342  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

The  satire  just  mentioned  was  published  in  Decem- 
ber, 1769,  at  an  interesting  juncture  in  Hopkins's 
history.  During  the  spring  and  summer  of  that  year 
he  had  sought  a  new  settlement.1  The  Old  South 
congregation  at  Boston  had  shown  him  some  favor, 
but  a  strong  opposition  made  a  call  impossible.  Hop- 
kins's own  disinclination  had  prevented  a  settlement 
at  Topsham,  Me. ;  but  six  weeks  of  preaching  at 
Newport,  R.  I.,  had  led  to  an  invitation  to  the 
pastorate  of  the  First  Church  of  that  thriving  sea- 
port by  a  vote  of  seven  to  three.  Hopkins  decided  to 
accept  the  call,  divided  though  it  was;  but  when  he 
had  reached  this  conclusion,  after  some  weeks  of 
thought,  he  found  that  Hart's  pamphlets  had  roused 
such  opposition  that  the  committee  requested  delay, 
urging  that  he  supply  the  pulpit  till  the  minds  of  the 
people  could  be  more  united.  So  Hopkins  labored 
on,  till,  by  March,  1770,  it  was  evident  that  the  major- 
ity was  against  him.  Convinced  that  his  usefulness 
at  Newport  was  at  an  end,  he  asked  leave  to  preach  a 
farewell  sermon, — a  discourse  which,  wholly  uninten- 
tionally on  the  part  of  the  preacher,  so  moved  the 
congregation  in  his  favor  that  within  a  few  days,  and 
under  the  leadership  of  some  of  his  chief  opponents, 
the  church  gave  him,  well-nigh  unanimously,  the  long 
doubtful  call  to  its  pastorate.  On  April  n,  1770,  the 

1  For  some  of  the  facts  in  this  paragraph  see  West,  Sketches,  pp. 
61-74. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  343 

formal  relationship  was  instituted  which  was  to  con- 
tinue till  his  death  on  December  20,  1803. 

That  pastorate  was,  however,  destined  to  be  a  time 
of  severe  pecuniary  trial.  The  Revolutionary  War 
broke  down  the  trade  of  Newport,  while  the  British 
and  afterward  the  French  occupation  of  the  town 
brought  in  all  the  distractions  and  distresses  of  military 
control.  Hopkins's  intense  Americanism  compelled 
him  to  fly  for  safety  from  the  British  invaders  in  De- 
cember, 1776,  and  to  be  absent  till  the  spring  of  1780 
— a  time  which  he  spent  in  pastoral  labors  at  New- 
buryport,  Canterbury,  and  Stamford.  His  home- 
coming found  his  congregation  scattered,  the  parson- 
age destroyed,  and  the  meeting-house  rendered  unfit 
for  use.  For  a  year  the  congregation  could  pay  him 
nothing,  while  an  attractive  call  to  Middleboro  prom- 
ised a  comfortable  support  for  his  invalid  wife  and 
considerable  family.1  But  Hopkins  was  not  a  man 
easily  discouraged  regarding  what  he  deemed  a  duty, 
however  distrustful  of  his  own  spiritual  life,  and  he 
elected  to  remain  at  Newport  without  fixed  salary  and 
dependent  on  weekly  contributions  which  are  said  not 
to  have  exceeded  two  hundred  dollars  a  year  in  their 
usual  aggregate.2  Nor  was  the  spiritual  fruitage  of 
his  pastoral  labors  at  all  encouraging.  His  church 
at  the  comparatively  flourishing  period  of  his  settle- 
ment had  only  seventy  members,  and  he  added  but 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  77-79.  2  Park,  Memoir,  p.  243. 


344  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

fifty-nine  by  profession  and  by  commendation  from 
other  churches  in  the  thirty-three  years  of  his  Newport 
ministry.1 

At  the  time  of  Hopkins's  Newport  settlement  we  saw 
that  he  was  smarting  under  Hart's  criticisms,  which 
he  believed  were  not  only  an  attack  on  the  truth  in 
general  but  a  special  cause  of  difficulty  in  his  Newport 
congregation.  To  a  man  of  his  temperament  a  speedy 
answer  to  Hart  was  inevitable,  and  before  1770  had 
run  its  course  Hopkins's  Animadversions  on  Mr.  Harfs 
late  Dialogue  3  had  been  given  to  the  public.  In  this 
pamphlet  he  charged  Hart  with  failure  to  read  his  own 
publications  thoroughly,  with  a  denial  of  total  deprav- 
ity, and  with  standing  "  on  the  arminian  side,  so  far 
as  he  is  on  any  side,  or  attempts  to  reason  at  all." 
Hopkins,  moreover,  urged  Hart's  attention  to  Ed- 
wards's  posthumous,  but  extremely  influential,  essay 
on  the  Nature  of  True  Virtue,  which  Hopkins  had 
published  in  1765,  calling  on  Hart  to  attempt  its  con- 
futation.3 The  effort  to  which  the  Saybrook  minister 
was  thus  dared,  he  undertook  with  a  good  deal  of 
acumen  in  1771;*  and,  in  1772,  his  fellow  Old 

1  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  84,  85.  ^  Published  at  New  London. 

3  Animadversions,  pp.  17,  29;    Professor  Park,  Memoir,  p.  195,  has 
fallen  into  error  in  saying,  regarding  Hart's  anonymous  satire  entitled 
A  Sermon  of  a  New  Kind,  etc.,  that  "  Mr.  Hopkins  took  no  notice  of 
this  pamphlet."     He  did,  and  very  positively,  see  Animadversions,  pp. 
29-31. 

4  Remarks   on   President    Edwards 's    Dissertations    concerning   the 
Nature  of  True  Virtue  :  Showing  that  he  has  given  a  Wrong  Idea  and 
Definition  of  Virttie,  etc.     New  Haven,  1771. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  345 

Calvinist,  Moses  Hemmenway  of  Wells,1  Me.,  like 
Moses  Mather  of  Darien,  Conn.,  two  years  earlier,8 
took  up  the  cudgels  against  what  Hart  had  styled 
'  New  Divinity  "  and  the  "  Hopkintonian  "  scheme.3 
To  all  these  Hopkins  replied  in  1773  in  his  strongest 
controversial  treatise,  An  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  of 
true  Holiness." 

In  presenting  his  view  Hopkins  claims  no  more  than 
an  amplification  of  Edwards's  theory  of  virtue/  Holi- 
ness, to  his  thinking,  is  love.6  It  is  "  universal,  dis- 
interested good-will,  considered  in  all  its  genuine 
exercises  and  fruits,  and  acted  out  in  all  its  branches 
towards  God  and  our  neighbour."  It  is  "essentially, 
in  nature  and  kind,  the  same  thing  in  all  beings  that 
are  capable  of  it."  It  is  "  the  greatest  good  in  the 
universe  "  and  that  "  union  of  heart,  by  which  the 
intelligent  system  becomes  one."  The  opposite  of 
holiness  is  any  form  of  self-love  which  puts  self  before 
the  good  of  the  universe  as  a  whole.  A  man  may 
truly  and  disinterestedly  estimate  himself  at  the  value 
he  has  in  the  universe  as  a  whole ;  but  love  for  self,  as 
self,  has  nothing  disinterested  in  it,  and  is  the  essence 

1  Vindication  of  the  Power,  Obligation  .  .  .  of  the  Unregenerate 
to  attend  the  Means  of  Grace,  etc.  Boston,  1772. 

*  The  Visible  Church,  in  Covenant,  with  God:  Further  Illustrated. 
New  Haven,  1770. 

3  The  latter  epithet  was  first  employed  in  Hart's  Sermon  of  a  New 
Kind,  see  West,  Sketches,  p.  97. 

4  Published  at  Newport.  5  Hopkins,  True  Holiness,  pp.  iv.,  v. 
6  For  the  statements  and  quotations  in  this  paragraph,  see  Ibid.,  pp. 

2,  3,  7-9,  19-31,  41,  74- 


346  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

of  sin.  Nor  can  any  man  be  sure  that  he  has  that 
disinterested  benevolence  wherein  holiness  consists  till 
he  is  ready  for  whatever  disposition  of  himself  the 
wise  Ruler  of  the  universe  may  see  is  for  the  largest 
good  of  all.  He  must  be  able  to  say  "  with  Moses, 
'  Blot  me,  I  pray  thee,  out  of  thy  book.'  If  God 
may  not  be  God,  and  order  all  things  for  his  own 
glory,  and  the  greatest  good  of  his  kingdom ;  and  if 
my  salvation  is  inconsistent  with  this,  I  give  all  up,  I 
have  no  interest  of  my  own  to  seek  or  desire."  True, 
says  Hopkins,  "  when  he  comes  to  know  that  he  is 
thus  devoted  to  God,  he  may  be  sure  of  his  own 
eternal  salvation.  But  let  it  be  observed,  he  must 
first  have  such  exercises  of  disinterested  affection  as 
these,  before  he  can  have  any  evidence  that  he  shall 
be  saved." 

The  passages  last  quoted  bring  to  our  attention  one 
of  the  most  famous  peculiarities  of  Hopkins's  theol- 
ogy, his  doctrine  of  "  willingness  to  be  damned,"  as  it 
is  generally  phrased,  or,  more  truly,  of  willingness  to 
be  disposed  as  seems  best  to  divine  wisdom,  whatever 
that  disposal  may  be.  It  is  a  doctrine  that  appears 
constantly  in  his  writings,  but  is  nowhere  more  drasti- 
cally set  forth  than  in  a  Dialogue  between  a  Calvinist 
and  a  Semi-Calvinist ,  written  in  Hopkins's  old  age  and 
published  after  his  death.1  ;<  If  any  one,"  z  says 
he,  "  thinks  he  loves  God,  and  shall  be  saved;  if 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  141-167.  *  Ibid.,  p.  150. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  347 

he  finds  that  his  love  to  God  does  not  imply  a  will- 
ingness to  be  damned,  if  this  were  most  for  his  \i.  e.t 
God's]  glory,  he  has  reason  to  conclude  that  he  is 
deceived,  and  that  what  he  calls  love  to  God  is  really 
enmity  against  him."  Yet  this,  to  most  Christians, 
utterly  repellent  demand  was  not  original  with  Hop- 
kins. Edwards  had,  indeed,  rejected  the  doctrine ; 1 
but,  to  say  nothing  of  thinkers  in  other  branches  of  the 
Church,  Thomas  Hooker  and  Thomas  Shepard  had 
forcibly  maintained  it  in  the  early  days  of  New  Eng- 
land.2 

From  this  strenuous  doctrine,  however,  Hopkins 
drew  hope  rather  than  despair.3  And,  however  dis- 
couraged about  the  religious  condition  of  his  own 
times,  he  was  far  from  taking  gloomy  views  of  the 
history  of  mankind  as  a  whole.  The  universe,  he  be- 
lieved, is  made  for  happiness.  An  all-wise  and  all- 
powerful  God  has  allowed  no  more  sin  and  misery  than 
he  sees  necessary  for  the  largest  happiness  of  the 
whole.  And  Hopkins  felt  convinced  that,  taking 
into  view  the  millennial  years  which  his  fancy  loved 
to  picture,  there  is  "  no  reason  to  conclude  that  but 
few  of  mankind  will  be  saved,  in  comparison  with 
those  who  shall  perish ;  but  see  ground  to  believe  that 
the  number  of  the  former  will  far  exceed  that  of  the 

1  See  ante,  p.  239. 

2  For  this  subject  and  references  to  the  literature,  see  G.  L.  Walker, 
Some  Aspects  of  the  Religious  Life  of  New  England,  pp.  27,  28. 

3  West,  Sketches,  pp.  165-167. 


348  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

latter."  He  held,  also,  contrary  to  an  impression 
that  has  sometimes  been  given  of  him,  that  no  infants 
were  in  hell.2  Indeed,  this  doctrine  of  infant  damna- 
tion, maintained  by  some  of  the  divines  of  seventeenth- 
century  New  England,  as  a  corollary  of  election  and 
reprobation,  had  almost  completely  died  out  of 
Christian  thought  in  New  England  by  the  time  that 
Hopkins  published  his  first  controversial  tractates. 

The  discussion  that  ended,  as  far  as  Hopkins  was 
concerned,  with  the  publication  of  his  Nature  of 
true  Holiness,  in  1773,  was  his  great  controversy;  in 
it  most  of  the  peculiarities  of  his  religious  opinions 
were  expressed,  and  he  felt  that  the  victory  had  been 
his  in  the  debate.  But  Hopkins's  pen  was  busy  with 
other  writings,  at  which  we  can  simply  glance.  Thus, 
in  1768,  he  published  a  sermon,  preached  in  the  Old 
South  Church,  Boston,  which  warmly  defended  the 
full  divinity  of  Christ,  then  beginning  to  be  doubted 
or  denied  by  some  in  eastern  Massachusetts.3  Again, 
in  1783,  moved  by  the  spread  of  Universalist  opinions, 
Hopkins  published  an  able  and  extremely  uncom- 
promising defense  of  the  doctrine  of  eternal  punish- 
ment, in  which  he  ventured  to  affirm  that : 4 

1  System,  i.,  p.  308,  ed.  1811. 

2  William  Patten,  quoted  in  Park,  Memoir,  p.  103. 

3  The  Importance  and  Necessity  of  Christians  considering  Jesus  Christ 
in  the  Extent  of  his  high  and  glorious  Character.     Boston,  1768. 

4  A  n  Inquiry  concerning  the  future  State  of  those  who  die  in  their  Sins. 
Newport,  1783.     The  quotation  is  from  pp.  154,  155. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  349 

"  eternal  punishment  reflects  such  light  on  the  Divine  char- 
acter, government  and  works,  especially  the  work  of  re- 
demption ;  and  makes  such  a  bright  display  of  the  worthiness 
and  grandeur  of  the  Redeemer,  and  of  divine  love  and  grace 
to  the  redeemed;  and  is  the  occasion  of  so  much  happiness 
in  heaven;  and  so  necessary,  in  order  to  the  highest  glory, 
and  greatest  increasing  felicity  of  God's  everlasting  king- 
dom; that,  should  it  cease,  and  this  fire  could  be  ex- 
tinguished, it  would,  in  a  great  measure,  obscure  the  light 
of  heaven." 

But  all  Hopkins's  wealth  of  imagination  and  of 
hope, — and  he  had  both  in  abundance, — was  poured 
into  his  treatise  on  the  Millennium?  which  was  pub- 
lished with  his  System  in  1793.  The  prophecies  of 
Daniel  and  Revelation  were  searched  for  guidance  to 
the  nature,  time,  and  duration  of  that  blessed  dispen- 
sation which  Hopkins  concluded  would  be  ushered  in 
"  not  far  from  the  end  of  the  twentieth  century,"2 
and  for  which  his  soul  longed. 

Hopkins's  feeling  that  the  universe  was  made  for 
the  largest  happiness,  and  that  it  is  the  duty  of  all 
disinterestedly  to  seek  that  happiness,  made  him  one 
of  the  pioneers  in  a  great  philanthropic  reform — that 
of  the  abolition  of  slavery.  Like  his  friends,  Edwards 
and  Bellamy,  Hopkins,  in  his  early  ministry,  was  a 
slaveholder.3  But  by  the  time  of  his  settlement  at 
Newport  he  had  become  convinced  of  the  enormity 
of  the  traffic  in  human  flesh.  Hopkins  was  not  a  man 

1  A  Treatise  on  the  Millennium,  bound  with  his  System.    Boston,  1793. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.,  p.  488,  ed.  1811.  3  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  114,  118. 


350  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

to  conceal  his  convictions.  Newport  was  the  centre 
of  the  slave  trade  in  New  England ;  Newport  fortunes 
were  largely  made  in  slave  ships ;  men  in  his  own  con- 
gregation were  interested  in  the  trade;  but  by  1770 
or  1771,  first  of  the  Congregational  ministry  of  New 
England,  Hopkins  was  vigorously  denouncing  slavery 
from  his  pulpit,  and  appealing  for  its  abandonment.1 
By  personal  solicitation,  and  even  by  contribution 
from  his  scanty  means,  he  secured  the  freedom  of 
quite  a  number  of  slaves  owned  by  his  Newport 
neighbors  or  his  ministerial  friends. 

But  his  thought  went  out  beyond  the  freeing  of  a  few ; 
and  at  his  own  suggestion  and  persuasion,  he  and  his 
ministerial  neighbor,  Ezra  Stiles,  later  to  be  president 
of  Yale,  sent  out  an  appeal,  in  1773,  for  means  to  train 
colored  missionaries  for  labor  in  Africa.2  For  this  pur- 
pose a  society  was  organized  by  Hopkins  and  Stiles  at 
Newport  the  same  year,  that  was  able  to  report  gifts 
of  £102  is.  4|</.  by  I776.3  Of  this  amount,  one  hun- 
dred dollars  was  the  contribution  of  Hopkins  himself 
as  a  kind  of  reparation  to  the  African  race — it  being 
the  sum  for  which  he  had,  long  before,  sold  his 
slave.4  By  this  society  and  other  friends  raised  up 
by  Hopkins's  efforts,  two  young  men  in  Hopkins's 

1  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  116,  118, 160.  Judge  Samuel  Sewall  had  written 
against  slavery  in  his  Selling  of  Joseph  in  1 700. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  129-132.     Circular  letter  of  August  31,  1773. 

3  Stiles's  and  Hopkins's  circular  letter  of  April  10,  1776,  p.  4. 

4  Park,  Memoir,  p.  138. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  351 

congregation  were  so  fitted  at  Princeton  and  elsewhere 
as  to  be  ready  to  go  to  Africa  in  1776,  had  not  the 
Revolutionary  War  prevented.  Successive  hindrances, 
for  which  Hopkins  was  in  no  way  responsible,  robbed 
the  missionary  project  of  success  during  his  lifetime, 
as  it  did  the  plan  for  African  colonization  which  he 
formed  before  1784;  but  the  seed  he  sowed  did  not  die.1 
These  efforts  Hopkins  accompanied  by  frequent 
publication  and  by  letters  to  men  of  influence.  Much 
of  this  address  to  the  public  was  through  the  news- 
papers;2 but  two  appeals  were  in  more  permanent 
form.  A  Dialogue  concerning  the  Slavery  of  the  Afri- 
cans ;  shewing  it  to  be  the  Duty  and  Interest  of  the 
American  States  to  emancipate  all  their  African  Slaves 
was  put  forth  in  I776,3  with  a  dedication  to  the  Con- 
tinental Congress,  and  was  republished  in  a  large 
edition  by  the  New  York  Manumission  Society  in 
1785.  A  less  important  tract  was  A  Discourse  upon 
the  Slave-  Trade,  and  the  Slavery  of  the  Africans,  de- 
livered in  1793.*  Moreover,  Hopkins  succeeded  in 
having  his  own  church  pass  votes  discouraging  the 
owning  of  slaves  by  its  members;  and  the  number  of 
colored  hearers  in  his  congregation  and  of  colored  sub- 
scribers to  his  System  testified  to  his  unfailing  kindness 
to  those  of  the  oppressed  race  in  his  own  town,  and  to 
their  appreciation  of  his  labors  in  their  behalf.6 

1  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  138-156.  2  Ibid.,  p.  119. 

3  Published  at  Norwich.  4  Published  at  Providence. 

5  Park,  Memoir,  pp.  157,  166. 


352  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

Hopkins's  prominence  as  a  citizen  of  Rhode  Island 
led  to  the  bestowal  upon  him  of  the  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Divinity  by  Brown  University  in  1790.  At  that 
time  he  had  been  for  eight  years  engaged  on  his  chief 
work,  his  System  of  Doctrines,  Contained  in  divine 
Revelation,  explained  and  defended,  which  was  to  em- 
ploy him  for  two  years  more  and  to  be  published  in 
1793. J  This  rock-ribbed  exposition  of  divinity  had  a 
sale  of  over  twelve  hundred  copies,  and,  to  the  sur- 
prise of  the  author,  brought  him  in  nine  hundred  dol- 
lars— a  sum,  wrote  Hopkins,  "  without  which  I  know 
not  how  I  should  have  subsisted."  "  I  consider  [it]," 
said  he,  "  the  greatest  public  service  that  I  have  ever 
done.  It  has  met  with  more  general  and  better  ac- 
ceptation by  far  than  I  expected,  both  in  America  and 
Europe;  and  no  one  has  undertaken  to  answer  it." 

The  expiring  hour  precludes  the  possibility  of  any 
consideration  of  this  monument  of  indefatigable  labor, 
and  fortunately  none  is  needed,  since  the  chief  pecul- 
iarities of  Hopkins's  thought  have  already  passed 
before  us.  Without  the  genius  of  Edwards,  Hop- 
kins's iron  and  relentless  logic,  his  exaltation  of  the 
divine  sovereignty,  his  reduction  of  righteousness  and 
of  evil  to  single  principles,  and  his  strong  conviction 
that  the  universe  moves  toward  a  single  goal,  that  of 
the  greatest  possible  happiness  of  the  whole,  and 

1  Published  at  Boston  and  reprinted  there  in  1811  ;  and  again  in 
Works,  i.  and  ii.,  Boston,  1852.  2  West,  Sketches,  pp.  101,  102. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  353 

moves  by  steps  of  absolute  divine  appointment,  give 
to  his  system  the  power  that  comes  from  unity,  con- 
sistency, and  intellectual  transparency.  While  built 
on  the  Edwardean  foundations,  boldness,  freedom, 
and  fearlessness  are  the  prime  characteristics  of  Hop- 
kins's  thinking.  It  dared  attack  accepted  truths  and 
question  their  rightf  ulness  to  be.  It  had  no  shrinking 
from  any  consequences  that  the  logic  of  the  premises 
demanded.  It  was  as  strenuous  and  as  able  a  critique 
of  current  beliefs  as  New  England  has  ever  seen. 
And  its  influence  was  great.  Seven  years  before  his 
death  Hopkins  wrote: ' 

"  About  forty  years  ago  2  there  were  but  few,  perhaps  not 
more  than  four  or  five  who  espoused  the  sentiments,  which 
have  since  been  called  Edwardean,  and  new  divinity,  and 
since,  after  some  improvement  was  made  upon  them,  Hop- 
kintonian,  or  Hopkinsian  sentiments.  But  these  sentiments 
have  so  spread  since  that  time  among  ministers,  especially 
those  who  have  since  come  on  the  stage,  that  there  are  now 
more  than  one  hundred  in  the  ministry  who  espouse  the 
same  sentiments,  in  the  United  States  of  America.  And 
the  number  appears  to  be  fast  increasing,  and  these  senti- 
ments appear  to  be  coming  more  and  more  into  credit,  and 
are  better  understood,  and  the  odium  which  was  cast  on 
them  and  those  who  preached  them,  is  greatly  subsided." 

Could  Hopkins  have  looked  forward  with  prophetic 
eye,  he  would  have  seen  the  opinions  which  he 
cherished  remain  a  powerful  influence  in  American 

1  West,  Sketches,  pp.  102,  103. 
*/.  e.,  about  the  time  of  Edwards's  death. 
23 


354  SAMUEL   HOPKINS 

religious  thought  till  the  time  of  the  Civil  War.  As 
the  influence  of  these  views  widened  after  his  death, 
however,  the  peculiar  intensities  of  his  presentation 
constantly  diminished. 

I  said,  in  speaking  of  Edwards  in  a  previous  lecture, 
that  as  a  controversialist  and  a  theologian  he  seems 
remote,  when  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
present  age.  I  presume  most  of  us  have  that  feeling 
in  a  higher  degree  regarding  Hopkins.  The  problems 
that  busied  him  are  not  those  to  which  the  theologians 
of  our  day  most  readily  turn.  The  conceptions  of  the 
Gospel  that  his  peculiarities  involved  are  not  those 
which  find  large  support  in  current  religious  thought. 
Whether  men  regret  or  rejoice  that  it  is  so,  the  pre- 
sentation of  Christian  truth  that  he  made  is  largely  of 
the  past.  But,  if  I  may  borrow  a  somewhat  over- 
worked current  phrase,  I  query  whether  more  of 
"  life  "  ever  flowed  through  the  work  of  any  religious 
leaders  of  New  England  than  through  that  of  the 
Edwardean  school  of  which  Hopkins  was  the  most 
strenuous,  and  on  the  whole  the  most  influential, 
representative. 

The  Master  said,  when  He  gave  His  disciples  a  test 
of  the  value  of  claimants  to  their  regard,  "  by  their 
fruits  ye  shall  know  them."  Hopkinsianism  presented 
a  view  of  the  religious  life  which  called  for  an  instant 
and  unreserved  consecration  to  the  service  of  God. 
Hopkinsianism  was  the  chief  human  instrumentality 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  355 

in  bringing  about  the  series  of  revivals  that,  between 
1791  and  1858,  revolutionized  the  spiritual  life  of  our 
New  England  churches;  its  leader  was  the  pioneer  of 
our  Congregational  ministry  in  attempting  to  remove 
the  curse  of  slavery,  and  in  endeavoring  to  send  mis- 
sionaries to  Africa ;  its  representatives,  more  than  any 
other  party  in  our  churches,  checked  the  Unitarian 
defection ;  it  contributed  at  least  as  largely  as  any 
other  force  to  the  reforms  in  theological  education 
inaugurated  by  the  foundation  of  Andover  Seminary; 
and  its  influence,  beyond  that  of  any  other  religious 
party  in  New  England,  led  to  the  establishment  of 
home  missions,  and  to  the  formation  of  the  American 
Board.  If  these  are  not  good  fruits,  then  the  re- 
ligious history  of  New  England  has  none  to  show. 

Hopkins  himself  survived  the  publication  of  his 
System  ten  years.  For  him  they  were  years  of  trial 
and  of  increasing  feebleness  due  to  old  age.  His 
congregation  was  small  and  composed  mostly  of  those 
advanced  in  life.  His  church  membership  included 
few  men.  His  sermons  were  reputed  "  dry  and 
abstract  "  by  the  young  people  of  his  flock,  who  wan- 
dered to  other  churches.1  His  unanimated  delivery 
became  less  attractive  with  years;  and  his  bodily 
weakness  was  greatly  augmented  by  a  paralytic 
stroke  which  he  suffered  in  January,  I79Q.2  Still  he 

1  Sprague,  Annals  of  the  American  Pulpit,  i.,  p.  433,  ii.,  p.  472,  473. 

2  West,  Sketches,  p.  105. 


356  SAMUEL  HOPKINS 

continued  to  preach  till  October,  1803,  though  with 
feebler  voice,  and  needing  the  assistance  of  his  colored 
protege,  the  sexton,  Newport  Gardner,  to  enter  the 
pulpit  and  sometimes  even  to  rise  to  deliver  the  ser- 
mon.1 

It  was  not  much  that  he  could  do;  and  perhaps 
it  was  a  consciousness  of  his  limitations  in  public 
speech  that  induced  him  to  make  a  list  of  his  congre- 
gation and  pray  for  each  in  his  study  daily  by  name. 
'  We  have  this  treasure  in  earthen  vessels,  that  the 
excellency  of  the  power  may  be  of  God,  and  not  of 
us,"  said  an  Apostle  who  resembled  Hopkins  in  this 
at  least,  that  his  written  argument  was  considered 
more  effective  than  his  spoken  discourse.  Hopkins 
saw  the  fruit  of  his  prayers  before  he  died.  On  the 
coming  of  Rev.  Caleb  J.  Tenney  as  a  candidate  for 
settlement  as  Hopkins's  colleague,  in  July,  1803,  the 
revival  for  which  the  old  pastor  had  so  long  vainly 
waited  began,  and  more  than  thirty  owned  themselves 
the  subjects  of  a  regenerative  change.2  Hopkins  lived 
to  witness  and  feebly  to  take  part  in  the  work;  but 
on  December  20,  1803,  he  died.  As  one  of  his 
brother  ministers3  sat  by  his  side  just  before  his 
departure,  the  sufferer  groaned  from  excess  of  physi- 
cal distress.  "  Doctor,  why  do  you  groan  ? "  said  his 
would-be  comforter;  "  you  know  you  have  taught  us 

1  Park,  Memoir,  p.  252. 

8  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  p.  472;  Park,  Memoir,  p.  259. 

3  Rev.  Joshua  Bradley,  of  the  Newport  Baptist  Church. 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS  357 

that  we  must  be  willing  even  to  be  eternally  lost." 
The  dying  theologian,  thus  reminded  of  a  cardinal 
article  of  his  faith,  replied,  "  It  is  only  my  body;  all 
is  right  in  my  soul."  ' 

1  Bradley's  letter,  in  Sprague,  Annals,  i.,  p.  435. 


LEONARD  WOODS 


359 


IX. 

LEONARD  WOODS 

IN  our  consideration  of  the  life  and  work  of  Samuel 
Hopkins  it  was  made  evident  that  his  theological 
battles  were  even  more  largely  with  those  of  Calvinistic 
faith  than  with  the  anti-Calvinist  and  Liberal  divines 
of  his  day.  Though  he  directed  his  attack  upon  the 
Liberals  when  he  maintained  the  full  divinity  of  Christ 
against  the  Arian  innovators  about  Boston,  and  criti- 
cised Mayhew's  wellnigh  Arminian  conceptions  of  the 
share  of  man  in  conversion,  his  heaviest  shots  were 
sent  against  the  Old  Calvinists,  Mills,  Hart,  Hemmen- 
way,  and  Mather,  who  held  none  of  the  distinctively 
"Liberal"  doctrines.  Not  that  Hopkins  had  any 
sympathy  with  the  tendencies  of  such  men  as  Chauncy 
and  Mayhew.  Far  from  it.  He  wholly  rejected  their 
views,  and  undoubtedly  esteemed  the  Old  Calvinists 
as  much  more  worthy  of  approval.  But  to  Hop- 
kins the  Calvinism  of  the  Old  Calvinists  appeared 
defective.  He  and  his  friends  were  the  "  Consistent 
Calvinists,"  as  they  often  styled  themselves,  who 
carried  their  principles  to  a  logical  completeness.  In 
Hopkins's  judgment  much  of  the  preaching  of  the 

361 


362  LEONARD    WOODS 

Calvinism  which  had  never  come  under  the  renovat- 
ing Edwardean  touch  was  wellnigh  fatally  misleading, 
and,  as  such,  deserved  strenuous  opposition. 

It  was  remarked  also  in  the  last  lecture  that  Hop- 
kins rejoiced  in  his  old  age  that  "  more  than  a  hundred 
in  the  ministry  "  had  adopted  his  views,  and  that  the 
number  appeared  to  him  "to  be  fast  increasing."  1 
This  conviction  was  no  delusion.  If  all  shades  of  Ed- 
wardeanism  are  taken  into  view, — the  comparative 
moderation  of  the  younger  Edwards,  the  much  greater 
moderation  of  Timothy  Dwight,  as  well  as  the  stren- 
uousness  of  Hopkins, — it  may  truly  be  said  that,  by 
the  year  1800,  Edwardeanism  had  obtained  a  de- 
cided numerical  superiority  over  Old  Calvinism  in 
Connecticut  and  western  Massachusetts,  and  had 
gained  possession,  though  in  its  most  moderate  form, 
of  the  chief  educational  center  of  western  New  Eng- 
land, Yale  College.  By  the  same  year,  Edwardeanism, 
especially  in  its  more  radical  Hopkinsian  presentation, 
was  beginning  to  press  into  eastern  Massachusetts 
with  power,  where  it  had  not  heretofore  been  largely 
represented. 

It  was  this  incoming  of  the  Edwardean  type  of 
Calvinism  in  general,  and  of  Hopkinsianism  in  par- 
ticular, with  its  eager  and  confident  polemics,  its 
positive  assertions  of  divine  sovereignty,  of  total  de- 
pravity, of  the  prime  need  of  a  radical  regeneration, 

1  See  ante,  p.  353. 


LEONARD    WOODS  363 

of  the  duty  of  instant  repentance  and  submission,  and 
of  the  spiritual  worthlessness  of  all  that  fell  short  of 
such  self-surrender,  that  made  evident  the  departure 
from  the  historic  conceptions  of  Christianity  which 
Liberalism  had  silently,  and  largely  unconsciously, 
brought  about  in  eastern  Massachusetts.  Easy-going 
Old  Calvinism  had  dwelt  side  by  side  with  the  new 
Liberalism,  and  neither  had  distinctly  perceived  the 
cleft  between  them.  The  new  Edwardeanism  came 
in  its  aggressive  Hopkinsian  form  and  precipitated  the 
Unitarian  separation. 

But  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  it 
seemed  as  if  Hopkinsianism  was  about  as  much  op- 
posed to  Old  Calvinism  as  to  Liberalism;  and  it 
appeared  probable  that  the  effect  of  the  incoming  of 
Hopkinsianism  into  eastern  Massachusetts  would  be  to 
split  the  historic  Congregational  body  of  that  region 
into  three  mutually  jealous  denominations.  This 
triple  schism  was  avoided,  and  the  conservative  forces 
of  Old  Calvinism  and  New  Divinity  were  so  welded 
together  in  opposition  to  the  Liberalism  which  soon 
became  Unitarianism,  that  the  fact  that  they  once 
stood  in  danger  of  cleavage  has  faded  out  of  the 
knowledge  of  all  save  historical  students.  No  event 
in  the  development  of  modern  Congregationalism  was 
more  important  than  this  union.  Doubtless  many 
causes  contributed  to  effect  it ;  but  as  far  as  it  was  due 
to  any  person,  the  Congregational  churches  of  eastern 


364  LEONARD    WOODS 

Massachusetts  owe  this  service  most  of  all  to  the  sub- 
ject of  the  present  lecture — Leonard  Woods. 

The  parents  of  Leonard  Woods  1  lived  at  Princeton, 
Mass.,  where  his  father  was  a  farmer.  Both  the 
father  and  the  mother  were  of  marked  character 
and  warm  religious  faith ;  the  father,  in  particular, 
being  of  much  more  than  usual  mental  gifts,  and  a 
considerable  reader  of  philosophy,  theology,  and 
English  literature.  The  little  town  gave  more  than 
usual  opportunity  for  some  acquaintance  with  these 
themes,  since  a  large  portion  of  the  extensive  library 
collected  by  Rev.  Thomas  Prince  of  the  Old  South 
Church,  Boston,  had  been  taken  thither  by  Prince's 
son-in-law,  Moses  Gill,  afterward  Lieutenant-Governor 
of  the  State,  and  placed  at  the  service  of  his  neigh- 
bors who  cared  to  read.  Here,  under  the  shadow  of 
Mount  Wachusett,  Leonard  was  born  on  June  19, 
1774,  almost  exactly  a  year  before  the  battle  of  Bunker 
Hill.  Here  he  grew  up  on  the  farm,  his  parents  ex- 
pecting to  make  a  farmer  of  him,  till  his  own  strong 
desires  to  become  a  minister,  his  evident  abilities  of 
mind,  and  an  illness  which  impaired  his  physical 

1  The  chief  sources  of  biographical  information  regarding  Leonard 
Woods  are  three  brief  sketches  of  his  life  :  (a)  in  Sprague,  Annals  of  the 
American  Pulpit,  ii.,  pp.  438-441,  based  on  facts  furnished  by  Woods 
himself  ;  (b)  in  the  funeral  sermon  preached  by  Prof.  E.  A.  Lawrence 
in  memory  of  his  father-in-law,  A  Discourse  Delivered  at  the  Funeral  of 
Rev.  Leonard  Woods,  D.D.,  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Theological  Seminary, 
Andover,  August  28,  1854,  Boston,  1854;  (c)  and  in  an  enlargement  of 
the  sketch  contained  in  this  sermon  published  by  Professor  Lawrence  in 
the  Congregational  Quarterly  for  April,  1859,  *•»  PP-  105-124. 


LEONARD    WOODS  365 

strength  led  his  mother  to  encourage,  and  his  father 
to  consent  to,  his  entering  on  preparation  for  college 
under  the  supervision  of  the  pastor  of  the  Prince- 
ton church,  Rev.  Thomas  Crafts.  The  pecuniary  re- 
sources of  a  farmer's  family  in  the  time  of  financial 
reaction  that  followed  the  Revolutionary  War  were 
meager  at  best,  and  scanty  aid  could  be  given  the  boy 
in  his  preparation ;  so  that,  save  for  three  months  at 
Leicester  Academy,  and  a  little  guidance  from  his 
minister,  he  was  self-taught  till  he  entered  Harvard  in 
the  autumn  of  1792.  It  gives  a  glimpse  of  the  home 
affection  which  followed  the  young  student,  and  of  the 
simplicity  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  to  learn  that  his 
mother  spun  and  wove  all  the  clothing  that  he  wore 
during  his  college  course.1 

The  Harvard  of  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century  had  altered  much  from  the  college  of  In- 
crease Mather's  day,  at  which  we  glanced,2  but  was 
very  unlike  the  great  institution  of  the  present.  Its 
faculty  included  a  president  and  seven  professors, 
three  of  whom  were  attached  to  the  then  newly 
created  medical  department.  Four  tutors  also  carried 
much  of  the  burden  of  instruction.  The  classics — 
that  is  to  say,  Horace,  Sallust,  Cicero,  Livy,  Xeno- 
phon,  and  Homer — still  constituted  the  chief  employ- 
ment of  the  first  three  years.3  Freshmen  also  studied 

1  Lawrence,  funeral  Discourse,  p.  10.  2  See  ante,  p.  178. 

3  Quincy,  History  of  Harvard  University,  ii.,  pp.  265,  274,  277-279, 
350,  499,  539,  540. 


366  LEONARD    WOODS 

Arithmetic,  Sophomores  Algebra,  and  Juniors  Dod- 
dridge's  Lectures  on  Divinity  and  the  Greek  Testa- 
ment. Senior  year  was  the  special  province  of  Logic, 
Metaphysics,  and  Ethics,  while  declamation  was  prac- 
ticed and  a  modicum  of  History  instilled  all  through 
the  course.  Hebrew  was  passing  away  as  an  under- 
graduate study  ;  those  students  whose  parents  fur- 
nished them  with  a  written  request  so  to  do  being 
allowed  to  substitute  French ;  and  the  change  from 
the  emphasis  once  laid  upon  themes  of  specific  value 
for  technical  ministerial  preparation  was  further  recog- 
nized by  the  recent  addition  of  instruction  in  English 
to  the  duties  of  the  Hebrew  professorship. 

From  a  modern  standpoint  the  course  of  study  was 
not  exacting,  nor  was  the  discipline  very  thorough. 
Many  ancient  customs  were  then  passing  away.  The 
Freshman  was  beginning  to  wear  his  hat  when  on  the 
campus,  and  ceasing  to  be  at  the  beck  and  call  of 
upper  classmen  when  his  superiors  wished  errands 
done.  The  college  was  struggling  to  keep  its  classes 
clothed  in  distinctive  uniforms,  and  fines  were  still 
the  punishment  for  many  infractions  of  college  dis- 
cipline. Religiously,  Harvard,  like  Yale,  was  carefully 
observant  of  worship  and  of  doctrinal  instruction,  as 
far  as  its  officers  could  make  it  so.  Just  twenty  years 
before  Woods  entered  Harvard  students  had  been 
relieved  from  repeating  publicly  the  heads  of  the 
sermons  they  had  recently  heard ;  and  for  eight  years 


LEONARD    WOODS  367 

they  had  been  excused  from  attending  the  more  tech- 
nical of  the  two  courses  of  instruction  given  by  the 
Hollis  Professor  of  Divinity  unless  they  intended  to 
enter  the  ministry.1  But  some  theological  instruction 
was  still  given  to  every  student. 

Yet  the  period  of  Woods's  residence  at  Cambridge 
was  about  the  ebb-tide  of  religion  among  the  students 
of  American  colleges.  The  French  alliance  in  the 
Revolutionary  struggle  and  sympathy  for  France  in 
her  own  revolution  had  popularized  the  French  con- 
tempt of  religion ;  and  able  and  in  many  ways  most 
devoted  and  patriotic  Americans,  like  Franklin,  Paine, 
and  Jefferson,  by  their  example  or  their  writings,  had 
spread  wide  among  the  students,  the  young  lawyers, 
the  physicians,  and  the  politicians  of  the  period  a  state 
of  indifference  or  of  hostility  to  revealed  religion. 
While  Woods  was  at  Harvard,  there  was  at  one  time 
only  one  professed  Christian  among  the  undergradu- 
ates.8 Harvard  was  no  exception  in  this  matter;  the 
first  labor  of  President  Timothy  Dwight,  when  he 
became  president  of  Yale,  just  as  Woods  was  en- 
tering on  his  Senior  year  at  Harvard,  was  to  combat 
the  all  but  universal  infidelity  of  the  students  of  his 
new  charge.  Indeed,  so  far  had  the  matter  gone  at 
New  Haven  that  many  of  the  Senior  class  "  had  as- 
sumed the  names  of  the  principal  English  and  French 

1  Quincy,  History  of  Harvard  University,  ii.,  pp.  259,  260,  274. 

2  Lawrence,  in  Congregational  Quarterly,  i.,  p.  106. 


368  LEONARD    WOODS 

infidels,"  and  were  generally  known  by  these  nick- 
names throughout  the  college.1 

Plunged  into  such  a  student  atmosphere  on  coming 
from  a  religious  home  to  college,  Woods  naturally 
experienced  some  mental  trials  in  that  painful  process 
through  which  many  a  young  collegian  has  to  pass 
when  a  faith  received  from  parental  instruction  is 
being  developed  into  a  personal  conviction.  Steady 
and  upright  in  personal  conduct  he  remained ;  but  the 
philosophy  of  the  eminent  English  Unitarian  minister 
and  chemist,  Joseph  Priestley,  greatly  attracted  him ; 
and,  for  a  time,  he  made  Priestley's  material  and 
mechanical  explanations  of  the  visible  world  his  own.' 
In  scholarship  Woods  easily  led  his  class  of  thirty- 
three  members,  delivering  an  oration,  entitled  Envy 
Wishes,  then  Believes,  at  his  graduation  in  I/96.3 

The  young  graduate  returned  from  college  to  his 
parents'  home  inclined  to  pursue  a  general  course  of 
philosophic,  historical,  and  literary  reading,  for  which 
the  Prince  library  gave  unusual  opportunity.  But  a 
fresh  influence  now  came  into  his  life.  A  new  pastor, 
Rev.  Joseph  Russel,  son  of  Rev.  Noadiah  Russel,  of 
Thompson,  Conn.,  had  just  been  settled  over  the 
Princeton  church  and  was  preaching  a  strenuous  Ed- 
wardean  type  of  theology.  Naturally,  the  two  young 

1  Life  of  Pres.  Dwight  (by  his  sons),  prefaced  to  his  Theology,  i.,  pp. 
20,  22,  23. 

2  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  p.  439. 

3  Lawrence,  in  Cong.  Quart.,  i.,  p.  107. 


LEONARD    WOODS  369 

men  talked  on  the  themes  suggested  by  the  sermons,1 
and  the  interest  thus  aroused  in  the  young  graduate 
was  deepened  by  a  visit  to  Cambridge  and  a  conver- 
sation with  his  intimate  friend  of  the  class  below  his 
own,  John  Hubbard  Church,8  who  had  recently  de- 
clared himself  a  Christian.  Church  persuaded  his 
friend  to  read  Doddridge's  Life,  and  Rise  and  Prog- 
ress :  while,  at  Russel's  suggestion,  Woods  studied 
Romans,  Galatians,  and  Ephesians.  He  had  now  be- 
come a  teacher  at  Medford,  and  as  he  thought  on  the 
themes  suggested  by  his  reading  his  perturbation  of 
soul  rapidly  deepened.  As  he  himself  wrote  to  his 
friend,  Church: 3 

'  Terror,  amazement,  cold  chills  of  body  and  mind, 
sometimes  a  flood  of  sorrow,  hard  thoughts  of  God,  dread- 
ful conceptions  of  his  character, — I  have  no  words  to 
express  my  state  for  about  a  week.  I  felt  my  health  de- 
clining. I  wandered  about.  I  tried  to  run  from  myself. 
I  awoke  in  the  morning  and  read  my  sentence  for  having 
committed  the  unpardonable  sin." 

But  light  and  peace  came  at  last;  and  with  it  a  de- 
sire to  confess  Christ  which  led  him  to  unite  with  the 
church  at  Medford  in  1797,  and  to  determine  to  devote 
his  life  to  the  ministry.4 

Woods  had  already  come  under  moderate  Hopkins- 

1  Russel's  statement,  quoted  by  Lawrence,  ibid.,  pp.  107,  108. 

2  For  his  biography,  see  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  pp.  445-449. 

3  Lawrence,  in  Cong.  Quart.,  i.,  p.  109. 

4  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  p.  439. 


3/0  LEONARD    WOODS 

ian  influences  at  Princeton,  and  though  he  debated 
whether  he  should  not  put  himself  under  the  theologi- 
cal instruction  of  the  Old  Calvinist  Hollis  Professor  of 
Divinity  at  Harvard,  David  Tappan,  the  advice  of  the 
Princeton  pastor,  Russel,  and  the  wishes  of  his  Ed- 
wardeanly  inclined  parents,  led  him  to  decide  in  favor 
of  a  more  strenuous  type  of  theology.1  The  autumn 
of  1797  saw  Woods  on  his  way,  with  his  friend  Church, 
to  the  home  of  Rev.  Dr.  Charles  Backus,2  at  Somers, 
Conn.,  then  one  of  the  most  noted  of  the  house- 
hold theological  schools  of  the  Edwardean  type. 
The  arrival  of  the  two  students  found  Somers  enjoy- 
ing one  of  the  earlier  of  the  great  transforming  series 
of  revivals  which,  beginning  in  1791,  were  repeated 
at  intervals  till  1858. 

Backus  was  no  believer  in  multiplied  meetings.  As 
Woods  said  later  of  him :  ' '  He  wished  those  who 
were  impressed  with  the  importance  of  religion  to 
have  time  for  retirement,  for  reading  the  Scriptures 
and  other  books,  and  for  prayer."  A  man  of  great 
self-control  himself,  he  would  allow  no  expressions  of 
religious  self-conceit,  whether  of  former  wickedness  or 
of  present  grace,  in  others.  In  theological  opinions 
he  sympathized  with  the  more  moderate  Edwardean- 
ism  rather  than  with  all  of  Hopkins's  peculiarities; 
rejecting,  for  instance,  Hopkins's  test  of  disinterested 

1  Lawrence,  in  Cong.  Quart.,  i.,  p.  in. 

2  Biography  in  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  pp.  61-68. 

3  Letter  of  August  19,  1849,  in  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  p.  63. 


LEONARD    WOODS  371 

benevolence,  the  "  willingness  to  be  damned."  But  he 
was  enough  of  Hopkins's  way  of  thinking  to  commend 
his  System  as  a  whole  to  the  approval  of  his  students. 
Personally  Backus  was  marked  by  a  profound  sense  of 
sin,  and  of  the  greatness  of  a  salvation  which  could 
rescue  men  from  its  control. 

Such  an  experience  as  Woods  now  enjoyed  was  the 
best  possible  for  a  young  convert  coming  from  the 
chill  religious  atmosphere  of  college.  Entering  thus 
into  the  thought  and  work  of  an  active,  sensible, 
acute-minded  pastor,  his  own  spiritual  life  deepened 
as  his  doctrinal  thought  quickened  and  clarified.  But 
his  residence  at  Somers  was  only  for  three  months,  his 
studies  thus  initiated  being  continued  through  the 
winter  of  1797-98  at  his  Princeton  home.  So,  fitted  by 
less  than  a  year  of  special  theological  training,  he  was 
licensed  by  the  Cambridge  Association  in  the  spring 
of  1798;  and  in  the  summer  following  was  called  to 
the  Second  Church  in  what  is  now  West  Newbury, 
from  which  the  Old  Calvinist  David  Tappan  had  gone 
to  the  Hollis  Professorship  of  Divinity  at  Harvard  in 
I792.1  The  terms  offered  by  the  parish  were  five  hun- 
dred dollars  for  a  "  settlement," — that  is,  to  enable  the 
young  minister  to  establish  a  home  in  the  community, 
—the  "  use  of  the  parsonage  land,"  a  salary  of  four 
hundred  dollars  and  eight  cords  of  firewood  annually, 
"  with  the  liberty  of  going  to  see  his  parents  for  two 


1  See  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  p.  439. 


3/2  LEONARD    WOODS 

Sabbaths  every  year."  '  Woods's  ordination  to  the 
pastorate  thus  offered  occurred  on  December  5,  1798. 
On  October  8,  1799,  Woods  followed  the  establish- 
ment of  these  ecclesiastical  relations  by  his  marriage  to 
Miss  Abigail  Wheeler,  a  daughter  of  Joseph  Wheeler, 
long  Register  of  Probate  for  Worcester  County.  Mrs. 
Woods  was  a  woman  of  rare  devoutness  of  spirit, 
Christian  confidence,  and  great  patience  during  the 
long  invalidism  that  preceded  her  death  in  i846.2  Ten 
sons  and  daughters  were  born  into  their  household. 

Like  many  a  young  minister  since,  the  new  pastor 
at  West  Newbury  speedily  induced  his  congregation 
to  adopt  a  revised  Confession  of  Faith  ;  and  in  Woods's 
draft  several  Edwardean  peculiarities  distinctly  appear. 
Thus,  with  Hopkins  and  the  later  Edwardeans  gener- 
ally, the  new  creed  asserted  the  doctrine  of  general 
atonement.  In  consonance  with  Edwardean  opinion 
it,  tacitly  at  least,  denied  the  imputation  of  Adam's 
sin  to  his  descendants,  while  affirming  that  "  by  the 
wise  and  holy  constitution  of  God,  the  character  and 
state  of  his  posterity  depended  on  his  conduct."  And 
a  forecast  of  controversies  speedily  to  come  is  seen 
in  the  declaration  "  that  Jesus  Christ  is  a  true  God 
and  true  man,  united  in  one  mysterious  person." 

1  Contributions  to  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of  Essex  County,  p.  106. 
Boston,  1865. 

9  A  biographical  sketch  by  her  husband  was  appended  to  Stuart's  A 
Sermon  Preached  at  the  Funeral  of  Mrs.  Abby  Woods.  Andover,  1846. 

3  Contributions,  pp.  382,  383. 


LEONARD    WOODS  373 

Personally  the  young  minister  was  tall,  slender,  and 
dignified ;  and  he  was  marked  also  by  a  ready  ease  of 
manner  and  kindliness  of  spirit  that  won  for  him  the 
good-will  of  those  he  met,  whether  children  or  men 
and  women  of  age  and  learning.1  As  a  pastor,  Woods 
was  greatly  beloved;  though,  if  judged  by  that 
almost  valueless  basis  of  estimate,  numerical  suc- 
cess, his  ministry  was  inconspicuous.  Probably  it  was 
largely  owing  to  his  exalted  conception  of  the  re- 
quirements of  a  Christian  profession  that  only  fourteen 
were  admitted  to  the  church  during  his  ten  years' 
pastorate.  Forty-nine  had  professed  their  faith  during 
the  eighteen  years  of  his  predecessor,  Tappan ;  and 
fifty-one  were  to  join  the  church  in  the  eight  and  a 
half  years  included  in  the  pastorates  of  the  three 
ministers  who  came  after  him.2 

Woods,  however,  soon  came  to  be  a  man  of  public 
influence  outside  his  parish.  At  the  Harvard  Com- 
mencement next  following  his  ordination,  July  17, 
1799,  he  delivered  a  master's  oration  that  attracted 
considerable  attention,  his  theme  being  A  Contrast 
between  the  Effects  of  Religion  and  the  Effects  of  Athe- 
ism? in  which  he  argued  "  that  the  disbelief  of  GOD 
presupposes  the  depravation  of  moral  principle,"  and 
found  a  "  picture  of  the  genuine  spirit  and  fruits  of 
Atheism  ...  in  the  character  and  conduct  of  the 

1  Lawrence,  in  Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  p.  441. 

5  Contributions,  pp.  383-385.  3  Published  at  Boston,  1799. 


374  LEONARD    WOODS 

FRENCH  "  '  black  enough  to  have  satisfied  the  most 
exacting  Federalist.  In  his  own  association,  as  well 
as  in  his  church,  he  earnestly  advocated  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  Half-Way  Covenant,  which  Edwardeans 
generally  opposed.2  This  opposition  won  the  hearty 
approval  of  the  chief  Hopkinsian  and,  on  the  whole, 
the  leading  minister  of  the  region,  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel 
Spring,  who,  since  1777,  had  been  pastor  of  the  North 
Church,  Newburyport,  and  was  related  by  marriage  to 
the  most  noted  Hopkinsian  then  in  New  England, 
Rev.  Dr.  Nathaniel  Emmons  of  Franklin,  Mass.8 
From  the  beginning  of  his  West  Newbury  ministry 
his  friendship  for  the  strenuous  Newburyport  divine 
strengthened  and  deepened  till  the  death  of  Dr. 
Spring  in  March,  1819."  So  great  was  Spring's  regard 
for  his  theological  opinions  that,  when  the  strongly 
Hopkinsian  Massachusetts  Missionary  Magazine  was 
begun  in  1803,  Spring  asked  him  to  become  one 
of  the  contributors.5  And,  on  the  whole,  without 
advocating  several  of  the  Hopkinsian  peculiarities, 
Woods  was  reckoned  as  belonging  in  sympathy  at  this 
time  to  the  Hopkinsian  side.6 

'Pp.  7,  ii. 

2  Lawrence,  Cong.  Quart.,  i.,  p.  115  ;  see  also  Spring's  letter  of  June, 
1805,  in  Woods,  History  of  the  Andover  Theo.  Seminary,  p.  451. 

3  Mrs.  Emmons  and  Mrs.  Spring  were  half-sisters. 

4  See  Woods's  own  account  of  his  intimate  relations  with  Spring,  in 
Sprague,  Annals,  ii.,  p.  87. 

6 Lawrence,  Cong.  Quart.,  i.,  p.  115. 

•Woods  reports  Jedidiah  Morse  as  saying  of  him,  in  1807,  that  "he 


LEONARD    WOODS  375 

But  the  young  West  Newbury  minister  no  less 
warmly  attracted  men  of  Old  Calvinist  sympathies. 
David  Tappan  and  Eliphalet  Pearson  had  become  his 
friends  when  he  was  their  pupil  at  Harvard ;  and  an 
even  more  influential  and  extremely  moderate  Ed- 
wardean,  who  was  regarded  as  essentially  Old  Calvin- 
ist, Rev.  Dr.  Jedidiah  Morse  of  Charlestown,  father 
of  the  inventor  of  the  electric  telegraph,  so  valued 
his  friendship  and  support  that  he  asked  Woods 
to  join  in  the  editorship  of  the  broadly  Calvinist 
magazine,  the  Panoplist,  which  Morse  was  chiefly  in- 
strumental in  founding  in  1805,  to  offset  the  Liberal 
Monthly  Anthology  that  had  been  established  in  1803.' 
The  help  which  Woods  contributed  to  the  Panoplist 
led  to  an  earnest  exhortation  to  the  young  minister 
from  the  vigorous  Hopkinsian,  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel 
Austin  of  Worcester,  not  to  "  secede  from  the  Hop- 
kinsian doctrine."  a 

Such  a  mind  as  that  of  Woods  is  difficult  for  extrem- 
ists in  times  of  excitement  rightly  to  value.  Consti- 
tutionally cautious  in  the  expression  of  opinion, 
moderate  in  his  judgments  of  men  and  of  theories,  he 
valued  union  more  than  the  maintenance  of  what 
seemed  to  him  distinctions  of  secondary  moment.  In 
the  great  controversy  with  the  Liberal  party  that 

knew  that  in  a  moderate  sense  I  was  a  Hopkinsian."     Woods,  History 
of  the  Andover  Theological  Seminary,  p.  106.     Boston,  1885. 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  42,  43,  70,  106,  426.  2  Letter,  ibid.,  p.  453. 


376  LEONARD    WOODS 

was  soon  to  be  forced  to  take  the  name  Unitarian, 
Woods  saw  that  the  union  of  all  those  who  supported 
the  main  doctrines  in  which  Old  and  New  Calvinists 
were  agreed  was  of  more  importance  than  the  further- 
ance of  any  "improvements"  in  theology  at  the 
expense  of  increased  division.  But,  though  the  per- 
sonal friendship  of  a  Hopkinsian  neighbor  like  Dr. 
Spring  might  thoroughly  comprehend  a  position  like 
that  of  Woods,  one  cannot  wonder  that  a  Hopkinsian 
extremist  like  Emmons  looked  upon  his  modera- 
tion as  in  a  measure  disloyalty  to  Hopkinsian  truth, 
and  gave  scant  sympathy  to  a  man  whose  discrimina- 
tion between  the  two  schools  of  current  Calvinism  was 
so  held  subservient  to  a  desire  for  their  association. 

This  largely  conciliatory  and  irenic  quality  of 
Woods's  mind  in  what  he  regarded  as  comparatively 
minor  matters  was  coupled,  however,  with  much  posi- 
tiveness  of  conviction  and  expression  on  what  he 
deemed  fundamentals  of  the  faith ;  and  the  combina- 
tion of  the  two  fitted  him  admirably  for  the  work  in- 
volved in  the  foundation  and  early  maintenance  of 
Andover  Seminary. 

It  would  be  as  impossible  in  the  time  at  my  disposal 
as  it  should  be  unnecessary  in  this  lecture-room,  to 
recount  at  length  the  involved  story  of  the  establish- 
ment of  this  oldest  of  American  institutions  specifically 
devoted  to  ministerial  education ;  but  so  much  of  the 
facts,  however  familiar,  as  may  be  necessary  for  an 


LEONARD    WOODS  377 

understanding  of  the  share  of  Woods  in  the  under- 
taking may  rapidly  be  passed  in  review. 

Liberalism,  as  was  pointed  out  in  our  consideration 
of  Chauncy,  had  so  far  invaded  eastern  Massachu- 
setts by  the  time  of  his  death  in  1787,  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  was  largely  questioned,  the 
total  depravity  of  man  was  discredited,  and  the  ever- 
lasting suffering  of  the  wicked  denied.  In  the  year 
of  Chauncy's  death,  King's  Chapel,  the  oldest  Epis- 
copal congregation  in  Boston,  ordained  the  anti- 
Trinitarian  James  Freeman  at  the  hands  of  its  own 
membership  as  its  rector,  and  became  the  first  dis- 
tinctly recognized  Unitarian  congregation  in  New 
England. 

No  Congregational  church  immediately  adopted 
an  avowedly  anti-Trinitarian  position.  But  Liberal 
views  steadily  and  rapidly  advanced,  pressed  into 
definition  by  the  spread  of  Edwardeanism  into  east- 
ern Massachusetts,  and  by  October,  1801,  the  old 
Mayflower  Church  at  Plymouth  had  led  the  schism  by 
dividing  on  the  issue.  The  Hopkinsians  had  estab- 
lished the  Massachusetts  Missionary  Society  in  1799, 
and  its  Missionary  Magazine  in  1803;  the  Old  Calvin- 
ists  and  moderate  Edwardeans  had  organized  the 
Massachusetts  General  Association  in  the  year  last 
named,  and  had  sent  forth  the  Panoplist  in  1805.  The 
Liberals  had  begun  the  Monthly  Anthology  in  1803, 
and  Boston  had  witnessed  the  opening  of  Channing's 


378  LEONARD    WOODS 

notable  pastorate  the  same  year.  Parties  were  ranged 
for  conflict,  and  the  lines  were  tightening  month  by 
month ;  so  that  when  the  death  of  Professor  Tappan, 
in  August,  1803,  left  vacant  the  Hollis  Professorship 
of  Divinity  at  Harvard,  it  was  recognized  on  all  sides 
that  the  character  of  his  successor  would  reveal  the 
forces  to  be  dominant  in  this  ancient  seat  of  learning. 
The  election  of  Henry  Ware,  on  February  5,  1805, 
was  the  visible  token  of  the  passing  of  Harvard  into 
the  control  of  the  anti-Trinitarians. 

The  manifest  loss  of  the  oldest  New  England  col- 
lege to  the  Evangelical  cause  quickened  into  action  a 
desire  that  had  been  growing  for  some  years  previous 
for  a  more  thorough  system  of  ministerial  education. 
Harvard  and  Yale  had  been  founded  primarily  to 
supply  the  churches  with  an  educated  ministry.  Their 
courses  of  study  had  been  originally  framed  with  this 
purpose  in  view;  and,  on  the  whole,  they  had  met  the 
requirements  of  the  early  colonial  ministry.  But  the 
youth  of  the  students  and  the  elementary  character  of 
the  curricula  rendered  the  training  of  the  ordinary 
college  graduate  of  the  eighteenth  century  inadequate 
to  the  advancing  claims  of  the  ministerial  office ;  and, 
to  afford  a  better  preparation,  the  Hollis  Professorship 
of  Divinity  was  founded  at  Harvard  in  1721,  and  a 
professor  of  theology  appointed  at  Yale  in  1755. 

Yet  more  efficient  and  popular  than  these  professor- 
ships was  the  habit  that  grew  throughout  the  eighteenth 


LEONARD    WOODS  379 

century  of  taking  a  few  months  of  theological  study 
with  some  leading  pastor  between  the  candidate's 
graduation  from  college  and  his  entrance  on  ministerial 
labor.  Many  of  the  New  England  clergy  thus  received 
students  into  their  households,  but  the  Edwardean 
leaders  most  of  all.  Edwards,  Bellamy,  Smalley, 
Backus,  Emmons,  and  others  of  this  party  were 
notably  active  in  making  their  own  homes  theological 
seminaries.  The  training  thus  afforded  was  by  no 
means  inconsiderable.  It  familiarized  the  student 
with  problems  of  parish  administration.  It  propa- 
gated most  effectively  the  theological  opinions  of  the 
instructor.  But  it  is  almost  needless  to  point  out  that 
this  system  of  education  gave  no  broad  view  of  church 
history,  no  careful  study  of  linguistics  or  exegesis,  and 
no  extensive  acquaintance  with  the  development  of 
Christian  doctrine  as  a  whole.  A  busy  New  England 
pastor  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  neither  the  time 
nor  the  books  nor  the  technical  education  to  give 
instruction  along  such  lines.1 

By  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
desire  for  yet  better  facilities  for  theological  education 
was  strongly  felt,  and  with  the  defection  of  Harvard, 
in  1805,  this  desire  was  crystallized  into  action.  In 
1806,  leaders  of  the  Old  Calvinists  and  of  the  Hop- 
kinsians  in  eastern  Massachusetts  were  planning,  each 

1  In  this  paragraph  I  have  borrowed  from  my  History  of  the  Cong. 
Churches,  pp.  346,  347. 


380  LEONARD    WOODS 

party  at  first  without  knowledge  of  the  purpose  of  the 
other,  for  the  establishment  of  a  theological  seminary.1 
The  Old  Calvinist  effort  centered  at  Andover,  where 
Samuel  and  John  Phillips  had  founded  their  Academy 
in  1778,  and  had  impressed  upon  the  remarkable  in- 
stitution that  then  had  its  birth  a  strongly  religious 
character.  Their  thought  seems  to  have  included  the 
possible  establishment  in  this  institution  of  a  professor- 
ship of  divinity  like  those  of  Harvard  and  Yale;  and 
John  Phillips  had  intrusted  funds  to  the  trustees  of 
the  Academy,  in  1795?  for  the  express  purpose  of 
aiding  students  in  theological  branches  "  under  the 
direction  of  some  eminent  Calvinistic  minister."  a  By 
the  help  of  this  fund  some  twelve  students  of  theology 
were  educated  at  Andover  under  the  tuition  of  Rev. 
Jonathan  French  of  the  South  Church,  between  1797 
and  the  opening  of  the  Seminary  in  1808. 3  When, 
therefore,  Professor  Eliphalet  Pearson,  who  had  been 
from  1778  to  1786  the  principal  of  Phillips  Academy, 
resigned  his  chair  of  Hebrew  at  Harvard  in  1806,  con- 
vinced that  the  passage  of  that  institution  to  the 
Liberals  demanded  a  new  and  conservative  seat  of 
theological  instruction,  it  was  natural  that  he  and  his 
friends,  Rev.  Dr.  Jedidiah  Morse  of  Charlestown  and 

1  Woods,  History  of  the  Andover  Theological  Seminary,  p.  47.     The 
best  account  of  the  founding  of  the  Seminary  is  in  the  work  just  cited. 

2  Report  of  Committee  on  Deeds  of  Gift  and  Donations,  p.  42.     An- 
dover, 1856. 

3  Woods,  History,  p.  49. 


LEONARD    WOODS  381 

Samuel  Farrar,  Esq.,  of  Andover,  should  view  An- 
dover  as  the  town  with  which  to  associate  the  en- 
terprise that  they  had  at  heart.  In  consultation 
with  them  the  "  Founders,"  as  they  were  technically 
called, — Samuel  Abbot,  Madame  Phoebe  Phillips  and 
her  son  John  Phillips,  Jr.,  of  Andover, — were  ulti- 
mately led  to  provide  the  means  for  such  an  under- 
taking; and  as  early  as  July,  1806,  Pearson,  Morse, 
Farrar,  Abbot,  and  other  members  of  a  "  Voluntary 
Association  "  were  laying  definite  plans  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  theological  seminary  at  Andover.  A 
constitution  for  the  proposed  seminary  was  soon  after 
prepared;  and  in  June,  1807,  the  Massachusetts  legis- 
lature authorized  the  trustees  of  Phillips  Academy  to 
to  hold  funds  for  its  use.1 

Meanwhile  that  strict  Calvinist  of  the  Hopkinsian 
type,  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Spring  of  Newburyport,  in  ig- 
norance of  the  Old  Calvinist  enterprise  at  Andover,  was 
planning  a  theological  school.  He  had  suggested  the 
thought  of  such  an  undertaking  to  his  young  friend, 
Leonard  Woods,  as  early  as  i8oi;3  and  by  the  close 
of  the  year  1806,  he  had  interested  in  the  enterprise 
three  laymen  of  wealth  and  religious  character,  though 
none  of  them  were  at  this  time  church  members. 
These  three,  William  Bartlett  and  Moses  Brown  of 
Newburyport,  and  John  Norris  of  Salem,  were  those 
afterward  known  as  the  "  Associate  Founders  "  of 

1  Report  of  Committee,  pp.  67-69.  3  Woods,  History,  p.  72. 


382  LEONARD    WOODS 

Andover  Seminary.  Yet  at  first  they  had  no  thought 
of  anything  but  an  institution  exclusively  of  their  own 
creation,  and  they  suggested  that  their  seminary  might 
be  at  West  Newbury,  with  Woods  as  its  instructor.1 
For  this  purpose  they  proposed  to  give  thirty  thousand 
dollars. 

The  day  following  this  eventful  decision  at  New- 
buryport  brought  Woods  to  Morse's  house  in  Charles- 
town  on  business  connected  with  the  Panoplist?  Of 
course,  the  younger  minister  told  his  older  friend 
what  had  been  done  by  Dr.  Spring  and  his  associates; 
and  heard  in  return  from  his  astonished  editorial  col- 
league the  plans  of  the  Old  Calvinists  at  Andover. 
Morse  at  once  presented  the  advantages  that  would 
flow  from  a  union  of  the  two  enterprises,  and  Woods 
agreed  with  him,  though  hesitating  at  first  to  put  him- 
self forward  in  advocacy  of  combination  on  account 
of  his  youth  and  almost  filial  relations  to  Rev.  Dr. 
Spring.  Professor  Pearson,  and  the  Andover  Old  Cal- 
vinists generally,  favored  the  union ;  but  Dr.  Spring 
believed  it  fraught  with  too  serious  doctrinal  peril,  and 
long  opposed  all  compromise  so  strenuously  that,  in 
March,  1807,  Woods  consented  to  accept  a  professor- 
ship in  the  proposed  West  Newbury  institution.  But 
no  sooner  had  Woods  come  to  this  decision  than  he 
repented  it  under  the  strong  conviction  that  rival 
seminaries  would  be  a  great  misfortune,  and,  throwing 

1  Woods,  History,  p.  75.  2  Ibid.,  p.  76. 


LEONARD    WOODS  383 

off  all  hesitation,  began  to  labor  most  assiduously  to 
bring  about  the  consolidation  of  the  enterprises.1 

At  first,  however,  it  looked  as  if  union  were  unattain- 
able, and  during  the  early  summer  of  1807,  Spring 
drafted,  with  some  assistance  from  Woods,  a  broadly 
Edwardean  creed  for  the  proposed  Hopkinsian  semi- 
nary;9 while  the  Andover  Old  Calvinists  committed 
their  foundation  to  the  care  of  the  trustees  of  Phillips 
Academy  in  August  and  September  of  the  same  year, 
stipulating  that  the  doctrinal  test  required  of  instruc- 
tors should  be  conformity  to  the  Westminster  Shorter 
Catechism.3  But  Pearson  and  Woods  still  labored  for 
union,  and  chiefly  through  their  persistence  it  was 
ultimately  brought  about.  A  hopeful  sign  was  the 
appointment  of  Woods  to  the  Professorship  of  Chris- 
tian Theology  in  the  proposed  Old  Calvinist  institution 
at  Andover  by  the  "  Founder,"  Samuel  Abbot,  in 
October,  1807, — an  appointment  which  Woods  did  not 
accept  till  just  before  the  union  became  an  accom- 
plished fact  in  May,  1808."  The  joint  institution  thus 
laboriously  brought  into  being  was  placed  under  the 
care  of  the  trustees  of  Phillips  Academy;  but  to 
guard  their  own  rights  the  Hopkinsian  "  Associate 
Founders  "  procured  the  establishment  of  a  "  Board 
of  Visitors "  with  supervisory  powers.  And  the 

1  Woods,  History,  pp.  80,  87.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  98-103. 

3  Report  of  Committee  on  Deeds  of  Gift  and  Donations,  pp.  69—85,  par- 
ticularly pp.  75,  76. 

4  Woods,  History,  pp.  108,  128,  129. 


384  LEONARD    WOODS 

"  Associate  Founders  "  and  "  Founders  "  agreed,  by 
a  further  compromise,  that  each  professor  of  their  ap- 
pointment should  assent  to  the  creed  which  Spring 
had  prepared  for  the  proposed  West  Newbury  semi- 
nary, as  a  statement  in  which  those  doctrines  are 
"  more  particularly  expressed  "  which  are  summarily 
expressed  in  the  Westminster  Shorter  Catechism.1 

The  accomplishment  of  this  union  of  Hopkinsian 
and  Old  Calvinist  interests  at  Andover  led  immediately 
to  more  cordial  relations  between  the  parties  else- 
where. In  June  following  the  agreement  of  the 
'  Founders"  and  "  Associate  Founders,"  the  Pan- 
oplist  and  the  Missionary  Magazine  were  consolidated; 
and  the  Massachusetts  General  Association,  hereto- 
fore looked  upon  askance  by  Hopkinsians,  received  in 
much  larger  degree  the  support  of  all  the  Evangelical 
forces  of  the  State. 

It  must  have  been  evident,  from  the  story  just  nar- 
rated in  outline,  that  no  small  share  of  the  success  that 
ultimately  crowned  these  complicated  endeavors  was 
due  to  the  labors,  and  even  more  to  the  personality  of 
Woods.  His  efforts  for  union  were  positive  and  in- 
fluential ;  but  even  more  influential  was  the  fact  that 
he  was  a  man  on  whom  both  parties  could  heartily 
unite.  The  same  qualities  that  had  made  him  equally 
welcome  to  the  constituents  of  the  Missionary  Maga- 
zine and  of  the  Panoplist  rendered  him  an  acceptable 

1  Report  of  Committee  on  Deeds  of  Gift  and  Donations,  pp.  113,  114. 


LEONARD    WOODS  385 

professor  of  theology  to  the  Hopkinsians  of  Newbury- 
port  and  to  the  moderate  Edwardeans  and  Old  Calvin- 
ists  of  Andover.  To  a  few,  indeed,  this  union  and  the 
man  who  symbolized  it  were  not  satisfactory.  To 
Emmons  the  union  always  seemed  too  great  a  conces- 
sion to  Old  Calvinistic  laxity  and  error;  to  Pearson, 
who  perhaps  labored  more  than  any  other  in  the  nego- 
tiations which  brought  it  about,  it  appeared  ultimately 
too  complete  a  Hopkinsian  victory.1  But,  looking 
backward  over  the  ninety  years  that  have  passed  since 
these  events,  it  is  manifest,  I  think,  that  no  work  of 
greater  importance  to  our  New  England  churches  was 
accomplished  in  the  opening  decades  of  the  nineteenth 
century  than  the  junction  of  the  two  Evangelical 
streams  —  that  flowing  out  from  Edwards's  work  and 
teachings,  and  that  having  its  source  in  the  older 
Calvinism.  It  consolidated  the  apparently  divided 
conservative  forces  of  eastern  Massachusetts,  it  set  a 
higher  standard  for  our  ministerial  education,  it  put  a 
barrier  to  the  Unitarian  advance.  And,  on  the  whole, 
no  man  contributed  so  materially  to  this  union  as 
Leonard  Woods. 

Woods's  acceptance  of  the  Andover  call  was  fol- 
lowed, in  June,  1808,  by  his  resignation  of  the  West 
Newbury  pastorate,  his  removal  to  Andover  Hill,  and 

1  Professor  Park,  in  A  Memorial  of  the  Semi-Centennial  Celebration  of 
the  Founding  of  the  Theological  Seminary  at  Andover,  p.  236,  Andover, 
1859  ;  Woods,  History,  p.  134. 
25 


386  LEONARD    WOODS 

his  inauguration,  together  with  that  of  Pearson,  as 
professors  in  the  Seminary,  at  its  opening,  September 
28,  1808.  On  the  next  day  he  began  his  teaching  in 
the  parlor  of  his  house,  for  Seminary  buildings  were 
yet  to  be.1  The  teacher  was  thirty-four  years  of  age. 
If  any  justification  of  the  new  foundation  was  needed, 
the  Seminary  received  it  amply  in  the  immediate  re- 
sponse of  the  churches  to  its  work.  Dr.  Spring  had 
hoped  that,  "  in  due  time,"  there  might  be  "  twelve 
or  fifteen  students  in  the  Seminary  at  once;"  the  first 
year  saw  an  attendance  of  thirty-six,  and  before 
Woods  resigned  his  professorship,  in  1846,  after  thirty- 
eight  years  of  service,  he  could  say  that  he  had  taught 
"  more  than  fifteen  hundred  students,"  of  whom 
nearly  a  thousand  had  "  finished  the  regular  course  of 
study."2  Before  that  resignation,  also,  nearly  thirty 
theological  schools  had  been  founded  by  the  Protestant 
religious  bodies  of  the  United  States.  By  Congrega- 
tionalists  Bangor  had  been  opened  in  1816;  Yale 
Divinity  School  in  1822;  Hartford,  then  at  East 
Windsor  Hill,  in  1834;  and  Oberlin  in  1835.  The 
Presbyterian  body  had  closely  paralleled  this  develop- 
ment, opening  Princeton  Seminary  in  1812  ;  Auburn  in 

1  Lawrence,  Funeral  Discourse,  pp.  16,  17  ;  Woods,  History,  pp.  130- 
133  ;  an  account  of  the  services  of  September  28,  1808,  which  included 
the  ordination  of  Dr.  Pearson,  a  sermon,  on  Matt.  xiii.  52,  by  President 
Timothy  Dwight,  and  the  inaugural  address  of  Professor  Woods  On  the 
Glory  and  Excellency  of  the  Gospel,  may  be  found  in  the  Panoplist,  New 
Series,  vol.  i.,  p.  191. 

2  Woods,  History,  p.  137. 


LEONARD    WOODS  387 

1821;  Western,  at  Allegheny,  in  1827;  Lane  in  1832; 
and  Union  in  1836.  The  Baptists  had  begun  instruc- 
tion at  Hamilton  in  1819,  and  at  Newton  in  1825 ;  and 
Episcopalians,  Lutherans,  the  Reformed,  and  Unita- 
rians all  established  strong  seminaries  early  in  this 
period. 

But  the  attendance  of  numbers,  or  imitation  by 
other  groups  of  Christians,  was  not  the  only,  or  the 
best,  result  of  the  new  foundation,  and  of  the  union 
of  heretofore  jealous  forces  on  which  it  was  based. 
The  rising  tide  of  religious  feeling  in  our  churches 
here  overflowed  in  missionary  consecration.  Andover 
Seminary  did  not,  indeed,  originate  American  foreign 
missions.  That  movement  had  many  roots.  Chief  of 
all  it  was  due  to  the  new  baptism  of  our  churches 
which  came  with  the  revivals  whose  first  manifestation 
was  in  1791.  The  Home  Missionary  endeavors  of 
Connecticut  and  Massachusetts  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  eighteenth  century  stimulated  it.  The  Connecticut 
Evangelical  Magazine,  founded  in  1800,  and  the  Massa- 
chusetts Missionary  Magazine  of  1803,  spread  before 
the  public  the  stories  of  English  missionary  endeavor, 
—for  foreign  missions  had  begun  with  power  in  Eng- 
land with  the  work  of  William  Carey  in  1792.  It  was 
from  the  missionary  household  of  one  of  the  editors  of 
the  Connecticut  Evangelical  Magazine,  at  Torringford, 
Conn.,  that  Samuel  J.  Mills  went  to  Williams  Col- 
lege, determined  to  give  his  life  to  missionary  service, 


388  LEONARD    WOODS 

in  1806.  Missions  were  in  the  air;  and  when,  in 
1807,  Mills  opened  his  heart,  under  the  shelter  of  the 
Williamstown  haystack,  to  Gordon  Hall  and  James 
Richards,  he  found  that  the  Spirit  of  God  had  antici- 
pated his  words,  and  the  path  was  ready  for  the  organi- 
zation of  the  Williams  College  Society  of  Inquiry  in 
the  spring  of  1808.' 

Yet,  if  Andover  Seminary  did  not  see  the  beginning 
of  the  foreign  missionary  movement  of  New  England, 
it  gave  such  a  focus  to  that  movement  as  made  its 
speedy  success  possible.  Here  Judson,  Hall,  Mills, 
Newell,  Nott,  Richards,  and  Rice  stimulated  one 
another's  consecration  to  the  missionary  cause.  Here 
they  found  sympathetic  counselors  in  the  faculty  and 
in  Dr.  Spring  of  Newburyport  and  Dr.  Samuel 
Worcester  of  Salem.  Here  on  June  25,  1810,  in  con- 
sultation with  Professors  Woods  and  Stuart,  and  Rev. 
Drs.  Spring  and  Worcester,  the  historic  application 
to  the  Massachusetts  General  Association,  which  was 
to  meet  two  days  later  at  Bradford,  was  determined 
upon,  and  signed  by  Judson,  Nott,  Mills,  and  Newell. 
From  this  consultation  Spring  and  Worcester,  on 
Tuesday,  June  26th,  made  their  memorable  journey 
by  chaise  to  Bradford — a  journey  in  which  the  Ameri- 
can Board,  as  established  by  the  Association  at 
Bradford  on  the  Friday  following,  was  planned.2  It 

1  Tracy,  History  of  the  American  Board,  pp.  21-24.     New  York,  1842. 
*  Ibid.,  pp.  25-27  ;  Lawrence,  Funeral  Discourse,  p.  17. 


LEONARD    WOODS  389 

must  have  been  with  a  sense  of  large  participation 
in  an  enterprise  of  far-reaching  significance  that 
Woods  preached  the  sermon  on  February  6,  1812, 
at  Salem,  when  Newell,  Judson,  Nott,  Hall,  and  Rice 
were  ordained  "  as  missionaries  to  the  heathen  in 
Asia."  ' 

The  advancement  of  missions  through  the  American 
Board,  on  the  Prudential  Committee  of  which  he 
served  from  1819  to  1844,  was  by  no  means  the  only 
form  of  their  novel  Christian  service  that  interested 
Woods.  The  American  Tract  Society  originated  at 
Andover,  through  efforts  begun  in  1813;  the  Educa- 
tion Society  of  1815  claimed  much  of  Woods's  labor; 
and  his  share  in  the  origin  of  the  American  Temper- 
ance Society  of  1826  was  conspicuous.8 

All  these  services  to  the  causes  of  religion  or  of  re- 
form, important  as  they  might  be,  were  subordinate 
to  Woods's  main  work  at  Andover,  that  of  instruction 
in  systematic  theology.  It  was  in  the  classroom  that 
his  best  labor  was  accomplished  ;  yet  he  had  not 
all  the  qualities  that  bring  fame  to  an  instructor.  His 
mind  seldom  flashed  forth  the  brilliant,  epigrammatic 
shafts  that  make  some  lecture-rooms  scintillate  like 
the  meteor-shot  sky  of  a  November  night.  In  the 
circle  of  his  friends  he  could  display  a  considerable 
degree  of  quiet  humor,  yet  he  rarely  revealed  this 

1  Published  at  Boston,  1812.     The  text  was  the  Sixty-seventh  Psalm. 
9  Woods,  History,  p.  199  ;  Lawrence,  Funeral  Discourse,  p.  18. 


390  LEONARD    WOODS 

gift  in  the  classroom.1  His  cast  of  mind  was  naturally 
cautious;  on  the  sharper  distinctions  between  the 
shades  of  Calvinism  of  his  day  he  sometimes  seemed 
indefinite ;  he  lacked,  in  a  measure,  that  power  which 
comes  in  the  classroom  from  having  a  full,  definite, 
promptly  expressed,  and  dogmatically  asserted  opinion 
on  every  question  that  student  inquirers  may  present. 
But  he  had  many  of  the  most  salient  gifts  of  a  great 
teacher.  If  his  instruction  was  seldom  brilliant,  it 
was  solid,  well  thought  out,  and  thoroughly  buttressed 
with  argument.  His  patience  was  remarkable,  his 
manner  uniformly  courteous,  his  skill  in  drawing  out 
and  directing  the  thought  of  his  pupils  by  questions 
conspicuous.  The  story  is  told  that  an  embarrassed 
student  of  Andover,  thrown  into  perplexity  by  the 
unexpected  intricacies  developed  in  an  examination 
for  licensure,  cried  out  to  his  ministerial  judges, 
"  Now,  gentlemen,  if  Dr.  Woods  could  only  ask  me 
one  or  two  questions,  the  whole  thing  would  be 
cleared  up."  a  His  spoken  words  and  his  written  page 
had  the  beauty  of  simplicity,  clearness,  and  ready 
comprehensibility.  And  he  had  that  perhaps  most 
effective  of  all  qualities  in  a  teacher,  a  hearty  personal 
interest  in  the  students  under  his  charge  that  led  him 
to  labor  not  merely  for  their  individual  intellectual 
advancement,  but  for  the  deepening  in  them  of  the 

1  Compare  the  remarks  of  his  son-in-law,  Funeral  Discourse,  pp.  20,  21. 
2 Ibid.,  pp.  23,  24. 


LEONARD    WOODS  391 

personal  spiritual  life  which  is  worth  more  in  the  prog- 
ress of  the  Kingdom  of  God  than  any  mental  attain- 
ment, however  great. 

To  give  any  adequate  idea  of  his  doctrinal  system  in 
a  single  lecture  is,  of  course,  impossible;  partly  be- 
cause it  so  agreed  in  its  main  outline  with  the  historic 
faith  of  the  moderate  Edwardean  school  to  which  he 
more  and  more  inclined  that  any  adequate  character- 
ization of  his  peculiarities  would  carry  us  into  the 
minutiae  of  doctrinal  discussion,  and  partly  because  its 
range  of  thought  covered  the  whole  field,  from  the 
divine  existence  down  to  the  particularities  of  church 
government.  The  age  in  which  a  man  lives  largely 
determines  by  its  discussions  and  its  needs  the  themes 
about  which  his  thought  will  center.  With  Woods 
the  salient  topics  of  his  argument  were  the  absolute 
authority  of  Scripture,  the  Trinity  and  the  nature  of 
Christ's  person,  the  divine  purposes  as  revealed  in  the 
methods  by  which  God  has  ordered  and  governs  the 
animate  and  inanimate  creation,  moral  agency  as  illus- 
trated in  man's  present  powers,  responsibilities,  abili- 
ties, and  inabilities,  man's  total  depravity,  and  the 
nature  of  the  atoning  work  by  which  sin  is  forgiven 
and  he  is  reconciled  to  God.  Such  an  enumeration 
signifies  little,  and  I  prefer,  therefore,  instead  of  at- 
tempting any  enlargement  of  these  topics,  to  give  you 
a  hint  alike  of  Woods's  doctrinal  emphases  and  of  his 
literary  style,  by  a  quotation  from  the  "  Dedicatory 


3Q2  LEONARD    WOODS 

Address"  to  his  pupils  prefixed  to  his  lectures  in  his 
collected  Works  :  1 

"As  to  matters  of  doctrine,  I  entreat  you  to  keep  at 
the  greatest  distance  from  all  unscriptural  speculations,  and 
to  repose  unlimited  confidence  in  the  word  of  God.  The 
minds  of  men  at  the  present  day  are,  to  a  fearful  extent,  in 
an  unsettled  state,  and  are  reaching  after  something  to 
satisfy  a  vain  and  restless  curiosity.  .  .  .  There  is,  in 
my  view,  no  ground  of  safety  but  a  serious,  unquestioning 
belief,  resulting  from  thorough  examination  and  Christian 
experience,  that  all  Scripture  is  divinely  inspired — that  the 
whole  Bible  was  written  under  the  special  guidance  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  and  is  consequently  clothed  with  divine  author- 
ity, and  is  infallible  in  all  its  teachings.  Hold  fast  to  this 
principle,  and  you  are  safe.  If  you  either  reject  or  doubt 
it  —  if  you  consider  the  whole  or  particular  parts  of  the 
Bible,  as  written  without  any  special  direction  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  or  if  you  regard  the  inspiration  of  the  sacred  writers 
as  of  a  similar  nature  with  the  inspiration  of  poets  and  ora- 
tors—  I  say,  if  thoughts  like  these  are  suffered  to  lodge  in 
your  minds,  you  are  standing  on  slippery  places,  and  there 
is  reason  to  fear  that  your  feet  will  quickly  slide. 

"  A  disbelief  of  the  plenary  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures 
is  generally  found  in  those  who  are  inclined  to  dissent  from 
the  common  creed  ;  and  though  it  may  sometimes  arise 
from  other  motives,  it  is  often  adopted  as  an  expedient  to 
get  rid  of  unpalatable  doctrines.  Beware  then  of  that  state 
of  moral  feeling  which  would  render  any  of  the  teachings 
of  revelation  unpalatable.  See  to  it  that  you  have  that  re- 
newed, spiritual  mind,  which  discerns  and  loves  the  truth 
—  which  specially  recognizes  the  doctrine  that  we  are  by 
nature  the  children  of  wrath;  that  in  our  fallen  state  we 

1  i.,  pp.  xii.,  xiii.     Boston,  1849. 


LEONARD    WOODS  393 

are  not  sufficient  of  ourselves  to  obtain  salvation  or  to  do 
anything  acceptable  to  God,  and  that,  unless  we  are  regen- 
erated by  the  Holy  Spirit,  we  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  —  the  doctrine  that  Christ,  who  is  both  God  and 
man,  died  for  our  sins  in  our  stead,  and  that  his  atoning 
blood  secures  to  believers  the  forgiveness  of  sin  and  the 
blessedness  of  the  world  above.  Shun  every  theological 
scheme,  which  gives  an  unscriptural  prominence  to  the 
agency  of  man,  and  comparatively  overlooks  the  agency  of 
the  divine  Spirit.  .  .  .  On  the  other  hand,  I  would, 
with  equal  earnestness,  warn  you  against  any  such  views  of 
our  dependence  on  God,  as  would  interfere  in  the  least 
with  our  free,  accountable  agency,  or  with  our  complete 
obligation  to  obey  the  law  and  the  gospel.  .  .  .  Avoid 
all  unscriptural  views,  and  unscriptural  representations,  and 
maintain  those  doctrines  of  religion,  which  the  experience 
of  ages  has  shown  to  be  best  adapted  to  bring  men  to 
believe  in  the  all-sufficient  Saviour,  and  which,  through  the 
divine  blessing,  have  had  the  greatest  influence  in  promot- 
ing personal  holiness,  and  genuine  revivals  of  religion. 

"  And  here  let  me  suggest  a  very  necessary  caution.  It 
is  a  fact,  that  the  greatest  difficulties,  and  those  which 
human  reason  is  least  able  to  obviate,  exist  in  regard  to 
doctrines  which  are  of  the  greatest  value,  and  which  are 
supported  by  the  most  satisfactory  evidence.  I  might 
instance  in  the  eternal,  uncaused  existence  of  God,  the 
Scripture  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  the  atonement,  and  the 
endless  punishment  of  the  impenitent.  Now,  if  you  should 
adopt  the  principle,  that  this  or  that  doctrine  is  not  to  be 
believed  because  it  is  attended  with  insolvable  difficulties, 
what  would  be  the  consequence  ?  Evidently,  that  you  would 
reject  from  your  creed  the  most  certain  and  the  most  im- 
portant truths,  and  in  the  end  be  plunged  in  downright 
skepticism.  I  caution  you  to  guard  against  whatever  woulcj 


394  LEONARD    WOODS 

lead  to  so  fatal  a  result,  and  particularly  against  the  habit 
of  looking  off  from  the  truths  of  religion,  and  from  the  clear 
evidence  of  those  truths,  and  occupying  your  thoughts  and 
your  time  with  efforts  to  remove  objections  and  cavils, 
which  is  frequently  a  hopeless  undertaking." 

During  his  years  of  instruction  at  Andover,  Woods 
was  constantly  busy  with  his  pen.  It  has  already 
been  pointed  out  that  when  a  young  minister  at  West 
Newbury  he  was  asked  to  have  a  part  in  the  two 
Evangelical  periodicals  of  that  day.  The  custom  of 
writing  for  current  publications,  thus  early  begun, 
Woods  kept  up  through  life.  He  was,  moreover,  in 
constant  demand  as  a  preacher  of  ordination  sermons, 
of  discourses  commemorative  of  the  older  ministers  or 
laymen  with  whom  he  had  been  associated  in  the 
founding  of  Andover  Seminary  or  in  the  early  history 
of  the  American  Board,  or  as  a  speaker  on  special 
occasions;  and  many  of  these  felicitous  and  appro- 
priate addresses  were  printed.  But  his  chief  publica- 
tions, during  his  active  teaching  at  Andover,  were 
either  semi-controversial  expositions  of  the  truth  as  he 
understood  it,  or  full-panoplied  polemics  against  what 
he  deemed  the  chief  errors  of  the  day.  Many  of  these 
publications  grew  directly  out  of  his  classroom  lec- 
tures. Thus,  in  1825,  he  put  forth  a  series  of  Lectures 
on  Infant  Baptism,  and  followed  them,  a  year  later,  by 
Lectures  on  the  Inspiration  of  the  Scriptures.  In  1832, 
he  published  in  the  Spirit  of  the  Pilgrims  several  Letters 


LEONARD    WOODS  395 

to  Young  Ministers.  In  1835,  his  Essay  on  Native 
Depravity  was  put  forth.  The  year  1843  witnessed 
his  vindication  of  Congregationalism  and  criticism 
of  Episcopal  claims,  the  Lectures  on  Church-Govern- 
ment;  and  this  was  followed,  in  1846,  by  his  Lectures 
on  Swedenborgianism.  Five  years  after  his  retirement 
from  active  duties,  in  1851,  he  issued  his  defense  of 
the  older  New  England  divinity  and  criticism  of  what 
he  deemed  current  errors,  the  Theology  of  the  Puritans. 
While  all  these  discussions  had  some  degree  of  im- 
portance in  their  own  day,  three  controversies,  yet  to 
be  mentioned,  are  of  greater  significance,  not  so  much 
because  Woods  showed  higher  skill  in  them  than  in 
the  arguments  just  enumerated,  but  because  they  had 
to  do  with  movements  of  larger  moment  in  American 
religious  thought.  These  more  noteworthy  contro- 
versial efforts  were  his  Letters  to  Unitarians  of  1820, 
his  Reply  to  Ware  of  1821,  and  his  Remarks  on  Ware's 
Answer  of  1822,  which  may  be  grouped  together  as  a 
single  discussion;  his  Letters  to  Taylor  of  1830;  and 
his  Examination  of  the  Doctrine  of  Perfection  as  held 
by  Rev.  Asa  Mahan,  President  of  the  Oberlin  Collegiate 
Institute  of  1841.  Woods  was  not  by  nature  a  con- 
troversialist. He  did  not  go  out  of  his  way  to  en- 
counter theological  quarrels;  but  he  did  not  avoid 
such  discussions  when  they  came  to  him  as  a  conse- 
quence of  his  office  or  of  his  teachings;  and  his  public 
position  as  professor  of  theology  in  the  leading 


396  LEONARD    WOODS 

Evangelical  seminary  of  New  England  during  those 
years  of  heated  controversy  made  theological  polemics 
unavoidable.  Yet,  when  he  is  compared  with  the 
theological  disputants  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
with  many  in  his  own  day,  one  is  struck  with  the 
courtesy  with  which  Woods  argued  with  an  opponent. 
His  own  true  feeling  of  Christian  charity  for  those  he 
deemed  in  error  he  well  expressed  when  he  said : ' 

"  I  cannot  avoid  the  persuasion  that  I  should  commit  a 
less  offence  against  the  Christian  religion  by  bad  reasoning 
than  by  a  bad  spirit,  and  therefore  that  I  am  bound  to  take 
as  much  pains  at  least  to  cherish  right  feeling  as  to  frame 
right  arguments." 

At  an  earlier  point  in  this  lecture  we  glanced  at  the 
triumph  of  the  Liberal  party  in  the  contest  for  suprem- 
acy over  the  theological  teaching  of  Harvard,  and 
saw  the  decisive  effect  of  that  victory  in  determining 
the  foundation  of  Andover  Seminary.  The  Liberal 
movement  had  thenceforward  intensified,  and  growing 
opposition  to  it  had  drawn  the  lines  more  and  more 
sharply  between  the  two  parties.  Park  Street  Church 
had  been  organized  as  an  Evangelical  outwork  in  Bos- 
ton in  1809;  from  about  that  time  onward  conservative 
ministers,  under  the  lead  of  Rev.  John  Codman  of 
Dorchester,  had  begun  to  refuse  to  exchange  pulpits 
with  their  Liberal  associates;  in  1815,  Jedidiah  Morse 
had  published  the  much-discussed  pamphlet  on 

1  Lawrence,  Funeral  Discourse,  p.  26. 


LEONARD    WOODS  397 

American  Unitarianism  which  ultimately  fixed  that 
designation  on  the  Liberal  party  and  led  to  its  general 
recognition  as  a  separate  religious  body;  and,  in  1819, 
Channing  had  outlined  the  theology  of  the  new  de- 
nomination in  his  famous  sermon  delivered  at  Balti- 
more on  the  occasion  of  the  ordination  of  Jared 
Sparks. 

In  all  this  contention  Woods  had,  of  course,  inter- 
ested himself  deeply;  and,  as  his  published  lectures 
show,1  he  had  elaborately  discussed  with  his  students 
the  most  loudly  controverted  point  in  debate,  the 
nature  of  Christ.  It  is  probably  true,  as  has  been  said 
of  late,  that  neither  side  in  this  warfare  comprehended 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  its  historic  Athanasian 
sense;  yet  the  Evangelical  champions  defended  with 
vigor  and  success  not  merely  the  full  and  eternal 
divinity  of  our  Lord,  but  His  full  and  complete  human- 
ity as  well,  against  the  crude  Arian  hypotheses  of  the 
earlier  American  Unitarians,  who  removed  Christ  from 
entire  partnership  in  humanity,  while  denying  Him  a 
true  participation  in  deity.2 

But  it  was  not  this  side  of  the  debate  between  Amer- 
ican Evangelicals  and  Liberals,  so  fully  set  forth  in 
Woods's  lectures,  that  he  discussed  in  the  Letters  to 
Unitarians  which  Channing's  sermon  drew  forth.  The 

1  Works,  i.,  p.  243-455. 

2  Compare  Chadwick,  Old  and  New  Unitarian  Belief,  pp.  147,  148. 
Boston,  1894. 


398  LEONARD    WOODS 

public  defense  of  the  person  of  Christ  against  the  inter- 
pretations of  Channing  he  left,  in  1820,  to  his  gifted 
colleague,  Prof.  Moses  Stuart, while  he  applied  himself 
to  those  questions  which,  though  not  so  fundamental 
when  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  universal  Christian 
truth  as  is  that  of  the  person  of  Christ,  yet  were,  even 
more  than  that,  the  topics  of  deepest  interest  and  wid- 
est divergence  in  the  debates  of  the  first  two  decades 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  What  is  the  nature  of  man? 
Is  it  full  of  vast  possibilities  of  good,  and  in  need  only 
of  a  salvation  by  education  through  which  character 
may  be  improved  and  developed,  as  the  Unitarians 
claimed ;  or  is  it  profoundly  sinful  and  depraved,  need- 
ing the  special  elective  application  of  a  divine  trans- 
forming grace  to  work  in  it  the  regeneration  that  it 
requires,  as  Woods  contended  ?  This  was  the  point 
at  issue.  Woods's  Letters  were  elaborately  answered 
by  Prof.  Henry  Ware  of  Harvard,1  to  whom  Woods 
replied  in  1821,  only  to  have  Ware  fire  a  second  shot, 
which  Woods  answered  in  1822;  but  little  was  added 
to  the  arguments  already  advanced. 

Woods's  discussion  with  Taylor  grew  out  of  a  con- 
troversy, now  almost  forgotten,  but  which  profoundly 
convulsed  Connecticut  in  the  third  and  fourth  decades 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  even  affected  to  some 
degree  the  Presbyterian  Church.  Nathaniel  W.  Tay- 
lor had  passed  from  the  pastorate  of  the  First  Church 

1  Letters  addressed  to  Trinitarians  and  Cahinists.     Cambridge,  1820. 


LEONARD    WOODS  399 

in  New  Haven  to  the  Professorship  of  Theology  in 
Yale  Divinity  School,  when  that  department  of  what  is 
now  Yale  University  was  opened  in  1822.  A  favorite 
pupil  of  President  Timothy  Dwight,  he  carried  further 
than  any  had  thus  far  done  the  moderate  and  concilia- 
tory type  of  Edwardeanism  which  Dwight  had  repre- 
sented, till  he  seemed  to  all  Hopkinsians  and  to  many 
Edwardeans  to  be  radically  astray  from  Edwardean 
principles.  Man's  acts,  Taylor  asserted,  are  not  ne- 
cessitated by  an  unqualified  law  of  cause  and  effect. 
God  knows,  indeed,  what  man's  choices  will  be,  for 
He  perceives  and  determines  or  permits  the  antecedent 
conditions  of  soul  and  of  man's  situation  from  which 
those  choices  flow.  Yet  man  has  the  power  of  con- 
trary choice  at  all  times.  Man  is  free;  but  this  "  cer- 
tainty with  power  to  the  contrary,"  allows  God  to  be 
sovereign  and  man  dependent.  Man  has  natural  abil- 
ity to  choose  aright,  and  this  ability  can  be  aroused 
to  action  by  an  appeal  to  self-love — a  self-love,  indeed, 
wholly  consistent  with  that  benevolence  which  has  the 
best  good  of  the  universe  as  its  aim.  Yet  while  man 
has  entire  natural  power  to  change  his  character  so  as 
to  love  God  supremely,  it  is  certain  that  he  will  not 
so  change  his  ruling  purposes  unless  the  Divine  Spirit 
so  moves  upon  his  feelings  as  to  induce  his  will  to  act, 
yet  to  act  without  coercion.  Moreover,  contrary  to  the 
opinion  of  the  older  Edwardeans  and  of  all  Hopkin- 
sians, sin  is  not  necessarily  the  means  of  the  greatest 


400  LEONARD    WOODS 

good  to  the  universe  as  a  whole.  Possibly  God  could 
not  have  excluded  sin  from  a  system  permitting  free 
action  by  His  creatures.  Yet,  though  God  may  not 
be  able  to  prevent  sin  in  such  a  system  of  freedom, 
man  can,  by  resisting  temptation ;  and  such  resistance 
would  be  preferable  to  any  yielding  to  sin,  not  only 
for  the  interests  of  the  individual  but  for  those  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole. 

To  the  older  type  of  Edwardeans  this  seemed  sub- 
versive enough.  That  self-love,  which  Edwards  and 
Hopkins  had  declared  the  essence  of  sin,  could  be  a 
motive  to  holiness,  the  more  conservative  disciples 
of  Edwards  could  not  believe.  Doubtless  they  did 
not  use  the  word  in  the  sense  in  which  Taylor  did ; 
but  to  use  it  at  all  was  enough  to  cause  alarm.  To 
affirm  that  God  possibly  could  not  have  prevented 
sin  in  any  system  was,  to  many,  to  deny  His  sove- 
reignty. The  conflict  waxed  so  bitter  that,  in  1834, 
the  opponents  of  Taylorism  in  Connecticut  founded  a 
new  theological  seminary,  under  the  charge  of  Rev. 
Dr.  Bennet  Tyler,  at  East  Windsor,  Conn.,  which 
is  now  located  at  Hartford  and  is  known  by  the  name 
of  its  present  domicile. 

It  was  in  the  earlier  stages  of  this  controversy,  in 
1830,  that  Woods  wrote  his  Letters  to  Taylor.  Cour- 
teous and  cautious  in  tone,  yet  positive  and  severe  in 
his  criticisms,  Woods  directed  his  attention  to  Taylor's 
treatment  of  the  divine  relationship  to  sin,  charging 


LEONARD    WOODS  40! 

him  with  holding  "  that  sin  is  not  the  necessary 
means  of  the  greatest  good,"  and  "  that,  in  a  moral 
system,  God  could  not  have  prevented  all  sin,  nor  the 
present  degree  of  it."  '  Over  against  this  denial 
Woods  strove  to  vindicate  the  common  Edwardean 
position  that  "  God  did  not  prevent  all  sin  nor  the 
present  degree  of  it,  because  it  seemed  good  in  his 
sight  not  to  prevent  it."  To  Woods,  it  seemed  that 
in  asserting  the  possibility  that  God  could  not  have 
excluded  the  invasion  of  sin  among  free  moral  agents, 
while  man  could  have  prevented  sin  by  not  sinning, 
Taylor  had  attributed  to  creatures  a  power  which  he 
had  denied  to  the  Creator.  And,  after  a  fashion 
characteristic  of  theological  controversy  in  all  ages, 
Woods  proceeded  to  draw  inferences  from  Taylor's 
supposed  principles,  finding  in  them  a  denial  that  God 
can  accomplish  the  good  that  He  desires,  or  be  com- 
pletely happy,  or  has  adopted  that  system  in  the 
government  of  the  universe  which  He  knows  to  be 
best,  or  that  God's  control  over  the  world  is  more  than 
a  limited  rule;  and  deducing  from  them  the  conclusion 
that,  on  Taylor's  premises,  a  Christian  cannot  be  justly 
happy  or  truly  humble,  or  confident  that  God  is  able 
to  grant  the  requests  he  offers  in  prayer,  however 
much  God  may  wish  to  do  so.  It  is  almost  needless 

1  Letters  to  Rev.  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor,  pp.  22,  54,  94-97.  A  good 
contemporary  account  of  this  discussion  may  be  found  in  Crocker,  The 
Catastrophe  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  1837,  pp.  157-173.  New 
Haven,  1838. 


402  LEONARD    WOODS 

to  say  that  Taylor  replied  with  a  denial  that  Woods 
had  correctly  stated  his  principles,  and  a  rejection  of 
Woods's  inferences  from,  and  supposed  logical  conse- 
quences of,  those  principles.1 

Of  Woods's  discussion  with  Mahan  it  will  not  be 
necessary  to  speak  at  length.  Among  the  evidences 
of  the  abounding  spiritual  life  of  this  period  none  was 
more  individual  than  the  foundation,  in  1833,  °f 
Oberlin  College  —  an  institution  designed  to  foster  a 
warmly  spiritual  type  of  piety,  to  give  education  to 
men  and  women  at  a  most  moderate  cost,  and  to  be 
the  center  of  a  consecrated,  self-denying,  reform-seek- 
ing religious  community.  In  large  measure  the  aims 
of  the  founders  of  Oberlin  have  been  realized  ;  but  the 
founders  and  early  leaders  of  the  college  were  men  of 
individuality  which  bordered  in  some  things  on  eccen- 
tricity, and  led  to  a  good  many  social  and  doctrinal 
innovations.  The  presidency  of  Oberlin  was  held 
from  1835  to  1850  by  one  of  Woods's  pupils,  a  gradu- 
ate of  Andover  Seminary,  Asa  Mahan ;  while  the 
professorship  of  theology  in  Oberlin  Seminary  was 
occupied  during  the  same  period  and  long  after  by 
Charles  G.  Finney.  Standing  in  general  on  the  basis 
of  the  later  Edwardeanism,  Mahan  drew  from  the 
obligation  of  all  men  to  obey  the  law  of  God  and  from 
the  promises  of  the  Gospel  the  conclusions  that  "  we 

1  Christian  Spectator  for  September,  1830 ;  Crocker,  Catastrophe,  pp. 
165-171. 


LEONARD    WOODS  403 

may  now,  during  the  progress  of  the  present  life,  attain 
to  entire  perfection  in  holiness,"  and  that "  the  sacred 
writers  assert  the  fact  that  some  of  the  ancient  saints 
did,  in  this  life,  attain  to  a  state  of  entire  sanctifica- 
tion."  '  These  views  Mahan  first  advanced  in  his 
Scripture  Doctrine  of  Christian  Perfection?  and  they 
were  substantially  adopted  by  his  colleagues  at  Ober- 
lin.  They  were  looked  upon  by  Presbyterians  and 
Congregationalists  in  general  with  great  suspicion, 
and  in  consequence  of  them  Oberlin  long  lay  under 
accusation  of  doubtful  orthodoxy. 

To  these  views  of  Mahan,  Woods  replied  with  a 
wealth  of  argument  in  i84i,3  maintaining  that  "  we 
ought  to  pray  God  to  sanctify  us  wholly,  and  to  do  it 
with  the  expectation  that  he  will,  at  no  distant  period, 
bestow  the  very  blessing  we  ask.  But  as  to  expecting 
the  blessing  to  be  fully  granted  in  the  present  life,  we 
differ  from  the  advocates  of  perfection."  Moreover, 
Woods  affirmed  that,  instead  of  attaining  holiness  in 
this  life,  the  truth  was  that  even  "  the  most  advanced 
saints  have  always  been  conscious  of  the  imperfection 
of  their  holiness." 

In  September,  1846,  five  years  after  the  publication 
of  the  argument  just  noted,  Woods  resigned  the  pro- 

1  Mahan,  in  American  Biblical  Repository,  pp.  409,  419,  for  October, 
1840. 

2  Boston,  1839. 

3  American  Biblical  Repository  for  January  and  April,  1841,  pp.  166- 
189,  406-438.     The  quotations  are  from  pp.  409,  427. 


404  LEONARD    WOODS 

fessorship  he  had  held  for  thirty-eight  years  and  which 
was  growing  to  be  too  heavy  a  burden  for  a  man  of 
seventy-two.  For  almost  eight  years  more,  till  August 
24,  1854,  he  lived  at  Andover,  till  death  came  to  him 
at  the  age  of  eighty.  The  surrender  of  work  which 
one  has  long  performed  faithfully  and  well  to  younger 
hands  and  altered  methods  is  perhaps  the  hardest  trial 
that  comes  to  old  age.  Woods  felt  its  burden.  But 
his  sunset  years  were  a  season  of  considerable  physical 
strength  and  mental  fruitage.  The  hand  of  time 
rested  kindly  on  him.  He  gathered  and  arranged  his 
lectures,  with  such  essays  and  sermons  as  he  wished 
to  preserve,  and  published  them  in  five  substantial 
volumes  during  1849  anc^  1850.  At  the  close  of  his 
life  he  had  nearly  finished  a  History  of  Andover  Semi- 
nary^ narrating  at  length  the  story  of  its  foundation  in 
which  he  had  had  so  large  a  share  —  a  History  that, 
by  a  curious  fate,  was  not  published  till  1885. 

Under  the  impressive  influence  of  the  death  of  this 
venerable  and  useful  teacher  of  Christian  truth,  the 
preacher  of  the  Discourse  at  Woods's  funeral  declared 
of  his  published  lectures : ' '  They  will  constitute  a  monu- 
ment more  enduring  than  Parian  or  Pentelic  marble." 
Unhappily,  it  is  given  to  few  theological  instructors 
to  write  much  that  after  generations  care  to  read. 
New  presentations  of  old  truths,  new  discussions  of 
altered  problems,  cast  a  veil  over  the  old.  To  build 

1  Lawrence,  Funeral  Discourse,  p.  20. 


LEONARD    WOODS  40$ 

one's  life  and  thought  into  the  progress  of  one's  own 
generation  in  some  greater  or  smaller  measure  is  the 
highest  service  granted  to  most  teachers  or  ministers. 
Excellent,  in  many  respects,  as  Woods's  lectures  are, 
they  are  not  his  chief  claim  to  remembrance.  His 
monument  is  to  be  found, rather,  in  a  union  of  the  Evan- 
gelical forces  of  New  England  so  complete  that  they 
have  wellnigh  forgotten  that  they  were  ever  in  danger 
of  schism  by  debates  between  Hopkinsians  and  Old 
Calvinists,  in  the  junction  of  these  forces  at  a  critical 
moment  in  New  England  history,  in  the  establish- 
ment of  an  advanced  system  of  theological  education, 
and  in  the  moderate  and  judicious,  yet  earnest, 
spiritual  and  positive  type  of  Edwardean  Calvinism 
that  he  made  part  of  the  mental  equipment  of  a 
large  proportion  of  the  early  graduates  of  Andover 
Seminary. 


LEONARD  BACON 


407 


X. 

LEONARD  BACON 

OF  the  eminent  Congregationalists  whose  lives  and 
work  we  have  thus  far  considered,  only  one  can 
have  been  personally  known  to  any  who  have  followed 
this  course  of  lectures.  Professor  Woods  is  remem- 
bered by  a  few  of  those  who  .have  kindly  listened  to 
these  biographies;  but  the  subject  of  to-day's  address 
is  doubtless  clearly  pictured  in  the  recollection  of 
many  of  the  older  of  those  who  are  here  assembled  as 
I  speak  the  name  Leonard  Bacon.  It  was  the  lec- 
turer's good  fortune  to  sit,  in  young  boyhood,  Sunday 
after  Sunday,  in  the  pew  directly  in  front  of  the  pulpit 
in  which  Dr.  Bacon,  then  virtually  pastor  emeritus, 
habitually  took  his  place  beside  his  younger  colleague. 
And  no  figure  was  more  distinctly  impressed  on  the 
speaker's  boyhood  memory  than  that  of  the  slight, 
erect,  active,  nervous  frame,  wearing  the  coat  which 
fashion  has  since  relegated  to  evening  dress,  but  which 
was  then  the  ordinary  pulpit  garb;  the  forceful  figure 
crowned  with  a  noble  head,  beautiful  in  the  whiteness 
of  its  abundant  hair  and  beard,  and  in  the  quick,  in- 
cisive expression,  to  which  the  piercing  blue-gray  eyes 

409 


410  LEONARD  BACON 

that  age  had  hardly  dimmed  and  the  firm  yet  mobile 
mouth  gave  perpetual  play  and  change.  The  boy 
who  then  sat  before  him  well  remembers,  too,  the 
sweetness  of  his  voice  as  he  would  often  rise  to  pray 
when  the  sermon  by  his  colleague  and  successor  in  the 
active  work  of  the  parish  had  concluded;  and  even 
childish  years  could  appreciate  something  of  the  ten- 
derness, felicity,  and  strength  of  the  words  in  which 
he  would  lift  the  petitions  of  the  congregation  along 
the  pathway  of  the  thoughts  to  which  it  had  listened 
in  the  discourse  just  concluded.  To  the  boy  below, 
the  figure  in  the  pulpit  seemed  the  type  of  what  an 
aged  minister  ought  to  be  in  look,  in  word,  in  dignity; 
and  even  the  boy  knew  in  some  childish  way  that  it 
was  a  great  man  that  sat  before  him,  and  felt  the  power 
of  that  greatness,  though  it  was  beyond  his  abilities 
then  to  define  wherein  that  greatness  lay. 

It  was  in  a  cabin  in  the  then  frontier  fur-trading 
town  of  Detroit  that  Leonard  Bacon  was  born  on  Feb- 
ruary 19,  1802.  His  father,  David  Bacon,1  by  birth 
of  Woodstock,  Conn.,  had  married  Alice  Parks  of 
Lebanon,  in  December,  1800,  and  on  December  3ist 
of  that  year  had  been  ordained  at  Hartford  by  the 
Trustees  of  the  Missionary  Society  of  Connecticut 
"  as  an  Evangelist  among  the  Indian  tribes  of  North 

1  The  story  of  the  pathetic  life-struggle  of  David  Bacon  was  most  sym- 
pathetically told  by  Leonard  Bacon  himself  in  the  successive  numbers 
of  the  Congregational  Quarterly  for  1876  ;  the  facts  of  this  and  the 
following  paragraphs  are  principally  gleaned  from  that  source, 


LEONARD  BACON  411 

America."1  The  ordination  of  the  young  missionary 
—the  husband  being  twenty-nine  and  the  wife  seven- 
teen— had  been  followed  by  the  weary  journey  by 
sleigh  and  on  horseback  or  afoot  to  Detroit, — a  jour- 
ney requiring  from  February  nth  to  May  Qth  of  the 
year  1801  for  its  accomplishment. 

At  Detroit,  when  his  eldest  child,  Leonard,  was  born, 
the  baffled  but  courageous  missionary  was  planning  to 
transfer  his  labors  to  the  banks  of  the  Maumee,  near 
the  present  city  of  Toledo,  as  affording  a  better  oppor- 
tunity for  reaching  the  Indians;  and  the  same  hope 
led  the  missionary  parents  to  go  to  Mackinaw  when 
Leonard  was  four  months  old.  But  the  work,  though 
self-denying  and  difficult  to  a  degree  without  example 
at  present  in  home  missionary  labor  in  the  United 
States,  had  little  promise  of  success.  The  Indians 
proved  practically  inaccessible;  and,  in  the  autumn 
of  1804,  the  missionary  family  reached  the  village 
of  Cleveland,  O.,  destitute  and  burdened  with  the 
debts  which  the  unexpected  expenses  of  frontier  life, 
in  spite  of  rigid  economy,  had  forced  upon  them. 
The  missionary  left  his  anxious  young  wife  and  little 
family  at  Hudson,  O.,  while  he  made  an  arduous  win- 
ter journey  to  Hartford  and  back  to  explain  matters 
to  the  Trustees  of  the  Missionary  Society  of  Connecti- 
cut, who  had  intimated  their  desire  to  see  him  in  terms 

^American  Mercury,  quoted  ibid.,  p.   19.     See  Connecticut  Courant 
of  January  5,  1801. 


412  LEONARD   BACON 

which  he  deemed  far  more  savoring  of  censure  than 
they  intended.  On  his  return,  he  settled  in  the  raw 
village  of  Hudson  as  part  missionary  and  part  pastor. 
But  the  thought  of  establishing  a  Christian  town 
that  might  leaven  the  Western  Reserve  with  the  best 
elements  of  New  England  life  took  strong  hold  on  his 
enthusiastic  spirit;  and,  from  1805  to  1812,  David 
Bacon  was  engaged  in  an  attempt  to  create  in  the 
township  soon  to  be  known  as  Tallmadge,1  a  commu- 
nity resembling  in  some  features  of  its  religious  basis 
that  later  organized  at  Oberlin.  To  Tallmadge  he 
removed  his  family  in  July,  1807,  and  took  possession 
of  "  the  new  log  house"  that  then  constituted  the 
only  sign  of  civilized  life  in  the  forest  by  which  the 
township  was  covered.  At  Tallmadge  David  Bacon 
aided  in  the  organization  of  a  church  in  January,  i8ic; 
and  there,  amid  the  sights  and  experiences  of  a  frontier 
settlement,  Leonard  Bacon  grew  from  his  sixth  to  his 
eleventh  year.  At  a  school  exhibition  in  the  neigh- 
boring town  of  Hudson  the  little  Leonard  and  his 
schoolmate,  John  Brown,  later  to  write  his  name  in- 
delibly on  American  annals  at  Harper's  Ferry,  took 
the  parts  of  William  Penn  and  Hernando  Cortes  in  a 
dialogue  as  to  the  proper  treatment  of  the  Indians, 
drawn  from  the  Columbian  Orator? 

1  Some  facts  regarding  this  enterprise  may  be  found  in  L.  W.  Bacon, 
A  Discourse  delivered  in  the  Memorial  Presb.  Church,  Detroit  .  .  .  Dec, 
24,  2882,  pp.  3,  4,  14,  15  ;  see  also  the  Congregationalist,  Feb.  2,  1899. 

2L.  W.  Bacon,  ibid.,  etc.,  p.  14. 


LEONARD  BACON  413 

But,  though  advantageous  for  the  larger  interests 
of  northern  Ohio,  the  Tallmadge  enterprise  brought 
only  anxiety  and  grievous  financial  burden  to  its  pro- 
jector; and  at  last,  in  May,  June,  and  July,  1812, 
the  disappointed  pioneer  and  his  household  journeyed 
back  to  Connecticut.  David  Bacon's  remaining  years 
were  few.  Hardship  and  disappointment  had  laid 
their  hands  upon  his  physical  frame,  though  they 
could  not  dampen  his  Christian  faith  and  courage,  and 
he  died  on  August  29,  1817,  at  Hartford,  not  quite 
forty-six  years  of  age,  leaving  seven  children,  of  whom 
Leonard,  the  eldest,  was  fifteen. 

The  boy  thus  early  left  fatherless  had  found  a  helper, 
on  his  coming  to  Hartford,  in  1812,  in  his  father's 
older  brother,  Leonard  Bacon,  whose  name  he  bore, 
and  who  was  a  leading  physician  of  the  little  city. 
Through  his  aid  the  younger  Leonard  had  received 
the  training  of  what  was  then  known  as  "  the  Hartford 
Grammar  School,"  the  excellent  institution  for  pre- 
paratory education  that  traces  its  history  from  1638  to 
the  Hartford  Public  High  School  of  the  present.  Thus 
equipped,  the  boy  entered  the  Sophomore  class  of  Yale 
College,  in  the  autumn  of  1817,  within  a  month  of  his 
father's  death. 

The  purpose  already  formed  within  him  was  to 
devote  his  life  to  the  ministry,1  and  his  Christian 
character  as  manifested  in  college  was  decided.  But 

1  See  the  Commemorative  Volume  issued  by  his  congregation,  entitled 
Leonard  Bacon,  Pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  New  Haven,  p.  254,  1882. 


414  LEONARD  BACON 

though  he  engaged  actively  in  the  discussions  of  the 
literary  societies,  read  English  literature  extensively, 
and  maintained  a  good  scholastic  standing,  the  boy 
of  eighteen  who  was  graduated  in  1820,  had  not  yet 
awakened  to  the  full  possibilities  and  responsibili- 
ties of  his  intellectual  life,  so  that  he  impressed  his 
friends  as  not  sufficiently  strenuous  a  student  for  his 
own  best  development,  and  as  "  in  danger  of  hurting 
himself  by  superficial  habits  of  reading."  '  Two  of 
these  friends  had  the  kindness  to  tell  him  their  judg- 
ment, and  their  words  had  effect.  The  theological 
course  which  he  began  at  Andover  in  the  autumn  sub- 
sequent to  his  graduation  was  marked  by  a  thorough 
application  that  had  its  reward  in  his  appointment  to 
deliver  the  principal  address  at  the  Seminary  com- 
mencement of  i823.2  Graduation  at  Andover  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  fourth  year  at  that  Seminary  as  a  resident 
licentiate  and  to  some  extent  as  an  assistant  to  Pro- 
fessor Ebenezer  Porter  in  the  department  of  Sacred 
Rhetoric.3  But  the  missionary  spirit  of  Bacon's  father 
attracted  him  to  the  Western  frontier,  and  with  the 
thought  of  this  labor  in  view  he  was  ordained  as  an 
evangelist  by  the  Hartford  North  Consociation,  assem- 
bled at  Windsor,  Conn.,  on  September  28,  1824.* 

1  President  Woolsey,  in  the  Commemorative  Volume,  pp.  226,  227. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  227,  228. 

3  Leonard  Bacon,  Two  Sermons  Preached  on  the  Fortieth  Anniversary 
of  his  Settlement,  published  in  the  Commemorative  Volume  above  cited, 
p.  77.  4 /#</.,  p.  77- 


LEONARD  BACON  415 

Yet  the  next  day  brought  the  young  man  who  had 
just  been  set  apart  to  the  ministerial  office  a  letter 
that  altered  his  entire  later  life.  The  ecclesiastical 
society  representing  the  business  interests  of  the  ven- 
erable First  Church  in  New  Haven,  moved  thereto 
by  the  suggestion  of  a  former  pastor,  then  the 
honored  Professor  Moses  Stuart  of  Andover,  asked 
Bacon  to  preach  for  them;  and  on  October  3rd,  1824, 
he  delivered  his  first  sermon  in  the  pulpit  that  was 
to  be  his  own  for  the  next  fifty-seven  years.1  Thir- 
teen more  discourses  so  largely  united  the  congre- 
gation in  his  favor,  that  on  December  I5th,  the  society, 
by  a  vote  of  sixty-eight  to  twenty,  invited  him  to 
become  its  minister  and  requested  the  church  to  join 
in  the  call.  Four  days  later  the  church  expressed  its 
approval  by  formal  vote,2  passed  with  "  uncommon 
unanimity."  The  salary  offered  was  a  thousand 
dollars.  On  January  17,  1825,  Bacon  wrote  from 
Andover,  accepting  the  invitation. 

On  March  8th  following,  a  council  of  representatives 
of  six  churches  convened  at  New  Haven,  after  "  a  day 
of  fasting  and  prayer  "  had  been  kept  by  the  New 
Haven  congregation.4  The  candidate  was  examined 
at  length;  to  quote  his  own  description,  forty  years 
later,  "  Many  questions  were  asked,  of  which  I  could 

1  Commemorative  Volume,  pp.  77,  78. 

2  Documents  in  the  Commemorative  Volume,  just  cited,  pp.  13-19. 

3  Leonard  Bacon,  Letter  of  Acceptance,  ibid.,  p.  18. 

4  Commemorative  Volume,  pp.  20,  21,  79. 


416  LEONARD  BACON 

not  then  see  the  bearing,  and  which  I  answered  with- 
out suspecting  their  relation  to  theological  parties  and 
controversies  soon  to  break  forth;  "  '  but  all  resulted 
in  his  approval.  The  next  day,  March  Qth,  he  was  in- 
stalled over  the  church  of  his  lifelong  ministry,  Rev. 
Joel  Hawes  of  the  First  Church  in  Hartford  preaching 
the  sermon.  The  new  pastor  was  twenty-three  years 
of  age. 

Yet  some  things  besides  youth  made  the  beginning 
of  the  pastorate  a  time  of  great  trial  and  difficulty 
for  the  young  minister.  The  pulpit  was  one  of  the 
two  popularly  ranked  as  the  most  conspicuous  in  Con- 
necticut, and  much  was  to  be  expected  of  its  occupant. 
Bacon's  immediate  predecessors  had  been  among  the 
princes  of  the  New  England  pulpit.  From  March, 
1806,  to  his  dismissal  to  the  professorship  at  Andover 
which  was  to  be  the  scene  of  his  most  conspicuous 
service  to  the  churches,  the  New  Haven  pastorate  had 
been  fulfilled  by  Moses  Stuart,  and  the  time  had  been 
one  of  constant  spiritual  quickening.  From  April, 
1812,  till  December,  1822,  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor,  who 
left  the  First  Church  for  the  chair  of  Theology  in  Yale 
Divinity  School,  had  set  forth  in  sermons  of  attractive 
eloquence  and  searching  power  the  doctrines  which 
were  to  lead  to  such  heated  controversy  when  ex- 
pounded in  his  classroom.  The  young  pastor  was 
conscious  of  the  difficulty  of  standing  in  the  place  of 

1  Commemorative  Volume,  pp.  79,  80. 


LEONARD  BACON 

men  of  such  talents  and  repute.  Addressing  his  con- 
gregation forty  years  later,  he  said  with  characteristic 
truthfulness,  "  I  think  I  understand  myself;  and  I 
know  it  is  not  an  affectation  of  modesty  to  say  that  I 
never  had  any  such  power  in  the  pulpit  as  they  had  in 
their  best  days."  1 

The  end  of  the  first  year  left  the  new  pastor 
11  with  the  desponding  expectation  that  [his]  minis- 
try would  be  a  failure."  But  courage,  patience, 
and  strength  were  characteristic  of  the  young  man; 
and  when  he  was  visited  by  several  prominent  mem- 
bers of  the  society,  headed  by  James  Hillhouse, 
treasurer  of  Yale,  Senator  of  the  United  States,  and 
New  Haven's  leading  citizen,  with  a  suggestion  that 
his  sermons  were  not  what  the  congregation  had  heard 
from  Stuart  and  Taylor,  the  young  pastor  simply 
answered:  "  Gentlemen,  they  shall  be  made  worthy;  " 
and  in  due  time  they  were.  Always  grave,  dignified, 
and  thoughtful  in  the  pulpit,  he  was  soon  heard 
with  entire  acceptance;  and  if  not  usually  manifesting 
great  oratorical  powers  in  what  may  be  called  the  more 
ordinary  ministrations  of  the  house  of  God,  when  the 
question  was  one  of  spiritual  interest,  moral  signifi- 
cance, or  public  concern,  he  speedily  showed  the 
possession  of  an  eloquence,  force,  and  cogency  of  argu- 
ment that  marked  him  as  a  born  leader  of  men.  By  the 

1  Commemorative  Volume,   p.  82  ;  compare  also  President  Woolsey, 

ibid.,  p.  228.  *  find.,  p.  83. 

27 


41 8  LEONARD  BACON 

close  of  the  third  year  of  his  pastorate  Bacon  was  able 
to  see  the  visible  fruit  of  his  preaching  in  a  revival 
movement  that  added  forty-eight  members  to  the 
church,  and  from  then  onward,  if  not  before,  his  posi- 
tion was  fully  secure,  not  only  in  the  affection  of  his 
congregation,  but  in  his  own  confidence  of  the  divine 
blessing  on  his  work.1 

As  a  pastor,  Leonard  Bacon  grew  deeper  into  the 
love  of  his  people  year  by  year.  Proud  of  his  church, 
the  history  of  which  he  did  so  much  to  expound, 
recognized  as  a  leader  in  the  community,  then  in  the 
State,  and  ultimately  in  national  affairs,  the  church 
grew  proud  of  him ;  and  he  endeared  himself  to  its 
members  by  his  ready  and  genuine  sympathies  with 
their  joys  and  sorrows,  and  his  own  deepening  and 
expanding  spiritual  life.  His  pastorate  was  one  which 
witnessed  a  strengthening  bond  between  pastor  and 
people  to  the  end. 

Dr.  Bacon's  personal  experiences  of  joy  and  sorrow 
were  such  as  to  fit  him  to  sympathize  with  and  minis- 
ter to  the  happiness  and  burdens  of  the  common  lot. 
Four  months  after  his  ordination,  in  July,  1825,  he 
married  Miss  Lucy  Johnson,  of  Johnstown,  N.  Y. 
Nineteen  years  later,  in  November,  1844,  she  was 
taken  from  him  by  death.  In  June,  1847,  ^e  married 
Miss  Catherine  Elizabeth  Terry,  of  Hartford,  Conn., 
who  survived  her  husband  for  a  few  months.  Of  his 

1  Commemorative  Volume,  pp.  83,  84. 


LEONARD  BACON  419 

fourteen  children,  five  were  called  from  the  father's 
household  before  his  own  summons  came.  But  he  had 
the  satisfaction  of  seeing  four  sons  enter  the  Congrega- 
tional ministry,  and  a  daughter  devote  herself  to  the 
elevation  of  the  race  whose  release  from  slavery  he  had 
so  vigorously  advocated.  In  household  joys  and  sor- 
rows alike  he  felt  that  the  providence  of  God  was 
teaching  his  soul,  and  fitting  him  the  better  for  the 
Master's  service.1 

Dr.  Bacon's  long  pastorate  was  broken  by  only  one 
considerable  absence.  In  July,  1850,  when  the  pastor 
had  been  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  service,  the  society 
granted  such  a  vacation  as  he  might  desire  to  enable 
him  to  visit  Europe  and  the  Mediterranean  Orient. 
The  journey  is  chiefly  important  for  our  story  as 
affording  Dr.  Bacon,  when  taken  captive  by  Kurds 
between  Mosul  and  Ooroomiah,  and  in  imminent  dan- 
ger of  death,  an  opportunity  to  display  a  physical 
courage  akin  to  the  moral  fearlessness  always  charac- 
teristic of  him.2 

Useful  and  successful  as  Dr.  Bacon  was  as  a  minister 
in  his  own  congregation,  his  largest  service  was  beyond 
the  bounds  of  his  parish.  For  this  wider  ministry  he 
had  some  remarkable  natural  talents.  His  disposition 
was  sanguine,  with  a  genuine  belief  in  the  triumph  of 

1  See  his  biographic  Half-Century  Sermon,   in  ibid.^    pp.   119-135, 
especially  pp.  132,  133. 

2  An  interesting  account  of  this  experience,  from  his  own   pen,  is 
given,  ibid.,  pp.  29-38. 


420  LEONARD  BACON 

righteousness.  His  sympathies  with  efforts  for  reform 
were  broad ;  and  he  was  ready  to  take  a  part  in  any 
contest  which  had  as  its  aim  the  advancement  of  a 
moral  principle.  He  did  not  shun  controversy.  In 
a  measure,  he  joyed  in  the  battle  with  the  confidence 
of  one  who  trusts  alike  in  the  justice  of  his  cause  and 
the  adequacy  of  his  powers.  But  his  polemics  were 
under  the  control  of  a  sound  judgment  as  to  when  and 
what  to  strike.  From  the  beginning  of  his  pastorate 
Dr.  Bacon  was  recognized  as  a  debater  of  power  in  the 
local  ecclesiastical  gatherings  of  Connecticut ;  for  the 
last  thirty  years  of  his  life  he  was  regarded  as  without 
an  equal  among  contemporary  American  Congrega- 
tionalists  in  skill  and  effectiveness  of  argument ;  and  so 
ready  and  well  furnished  was  his  mind  that  it  often 
seemed  to  his  associates  that  he  spoke  most  effectively 
when  drawn  unexpectedly  into  discussion. 

To  this  parliamentary  skilfulness  Dr.  Bacon  added  a 
literary  style  of  remarkable  felicity.  His  writings  were 
not  merely  transparent :  they  sparkled  with  wit,  glowed 
with  feeling,  and  expressed  his  thought  with  a  precision, 
appropriateness,  and  freshness  that  showed  him  a  mas- 
ter in  the  use  of  language,  and  made  it  a  pleasure  to  read 
that  which  he  wrote.  He  could  be  largely  oblivious 
to  external  distractions  in  writing,  and  his  thoughts 
were  transferred  to  the  written  page  with  a  quickness 
and  an  apparent  ease  *  that  was  a  constant  source  of 

1  See  the  remarks  of  Rev.  Dr.  R.  S.  Storrs,  ibid.,  pp.  197,  198. 


LEONARD  BACON  421 

surprise  to  his  associates.  An  evident  appreciation 
of  these  gifts  is  to  be  seen  in  his  election,  in  1839,  to  a 
professorship  of  Rhetoric  and  Oratory  in  Yale  College, 
an  election  which  he  declined. 

One  minor  evidence  of  Dr.  Bacon's  versatility  of 
mind,  not,  indeed,  as  marked  as  the  qualities  just  men- 
tioned, was  his  poetic  strain.  He  was  not  conspicu- 
ously a  poet, —  he  does  not  even  rank  among  our 
foremost  hymn  writers, — yet  no  hymn  promises  to  be 
more  permanently  acceptable  to  the  sons  and  daughters 
of  New  England  than  his  noble  psalm  of  1833: — 

"  O  God,  beneath  Thy  guiding  hand, 
Our  exiled  fathers  crossed  the  sea." 

The  mention  of  this  stirring  hymn  of  thanksgiving 
for  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  achievements  reminds  us  that 
one  of  the  greatest  of  Dr.  Bacon's  services  to  Congre- 
gationalism was  his  illumination  of  its  history.  In  that 
story  he  took  an  intense  and  personal  delight.  As 
far  as  any  beginning  may  be  assigned  to  the  studies 
which  bore  fruit  till  the  close  of  his  life,  they  had  their 
origin  in  his  reading  during  those  trying  years  of  his 
early  ministry,1 — reading  which,  among  other  results, 
led  him  to  put  forth,  as  a  stimulus  to  the  spiritual  life 
"  of  private  Christians,  and  of  Christian  families," 

1  Dr.  Bacon,  in  a  debate  in  the  Boston  Council  of  1865,  assigned 
weight  in  the  development  of  his  interest  in  Congregationalism  to  an 
article  published  by  Rev.  Joshua  Leavitt,  in  1830,  in  the  Quarterly 
Christian  Spectator  ;  see  Debates  and  Proceedings  of  the  National  Council 
.  .  .  held  at  Boston,  June  14-24,  1865,  pp.  445,  446. 


422  LEONARD  BACON 

his  first  important  publication,  the  Select  Practical 
Writings  of  Richard  Baxter,  in  1831.'  To  this  selec- 
tion he  prefixed  an  elaborate  biographical  sketch  of 
Baxter,  the  preparation  of  which  gave  him  a  thorough 
initiation  into  the  story  of  the  Puritan  movement. 

The  same  pastoral  zeal  which  led  Dr.  Bacon  to  the 
publication  of  Baxter's  edificatory  writings,  prompted 
him  to  preach  a  series  of  "  Sunday  evening  lectures  " 
which  were  gathered  up  in  a  useful  little  volume  in 
1833,  under  the  title,  A  Manual  for  Young  Church 
Members?  In  this  treatise  the  author's  interest  in  and 
love  for  Congregationalism  are  clearly  outspoken.  "  I 
cannot  but  think,"  he  remarks,  "that  if  the  Congre- 
gational organization  should  be  extensively  adopted 
by  evangelical  Christians  everywhere,  the  result  would 
be  not  only  a  vast  extension  of  the  principles  and  of 
the  life  of  rational  liberty,  but  a  great  development  of 
the  spirit  of  Christian  purity  and  fidelity,  and  of  the 
energy  of  Christian  zeal."  3 

Such  enthusiasm  was  needed,  for  Congregationalists 
were  then  generally  in  the  depths  of  their  denomina- 
tional self-distrust.  The  Unitarian  defection  seemed 
to  many  to  be  due  to  a  lack  of  "  a  strong  govern- 
ment," such  as  Presbyterianism  then  prided  itself  on 
possessing.  The  ascription  of  Unitarianism  to  this 
cause  was  indeed  an  error;  but  our  pulpits  and  our 

1  Published  at  New  Haven  in  two  volumes  of  six  hundred  pages  each. 

2  Published  at  New  Haven.  3  Manual,  pp.  7,  S. 


LEONARD  BACON  423 

theological  chairs  with  rare  exceptions  made  little  of 
the  distinctive  principles  of  Congregationalism ;  the 
majority  of  our  ministers  regarded  polity,  at  least 
between  Congregationalists  and  Presbyterians,  as  a 
question  of  geography  to  be  determined  by  one's  posi- 
tion to  the  eastward  or  to  the  westward  of  the  Hudson 
River.  And,  in  Connecticut,  Consociationism  had  so 
modified  the  feelings  as  well  as  the  usages  of  our 
churches  that  at  the  time  when  Dr.  Bacon  published 
his  Manual  their  popular  designation  was  "  Presbyte- 
rian." To  no  man  was  the  reentrance  of  our  churches 
upon  their  heritage  more  due  than  to  Dr.  Bacon. 

The  historic  bent  of  Dr.  Bacon's  mind  was  revealed 
by  these  early  studies,  so  that  when  the  years  1838  and 
1839  brought  the  two  hundredth  anniversaries  of  the 
planting  of  New  Haven  colony  and  of  the  foundation 
of  the  church  of  which  Dr.  Bacon  was  pastor,  it  was 
to  be  expected  that  the  events  should  receive  some 
historic  treatment  from  his  pen.  But  the  volume  of 
Thirteen  Historical  Discourses  '  in  which  he  commemo- 
rated these  occurrences  was  a  work  of  more  than  a 
passing  significance.  It  was  the  first  attempt  for  more 
than  a  generation  to  tell  the  religious  story  of  Connect- 
icut; and  the  story  is  so  admirably  combined  and  cor- 
related with  the  local  history  of  his  own  church  that  ever 
since  its  publication  it  has  served  as  a  pattern  for  our 
better  church  histories.  Its  clearness  of  historic  insight, 

1  Published  at  New  Haven,  1839. 


424  LEONARD  BACON 

breadth  of  treatment,  and  charm  of  presentation  won 
immediate  repute  for  its  author  as  a  historian.  He 
had  already,  in  1838,  been  made  a  corresponding  mem- 
ber of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  He  now, 
in  the  year  of  the  publication  of  his  Thirteen  Historical 
Discourses,  was  elected  to  the  Historical  Societies  of 
Connecticut,  New  York,  and  Georgia.  And  doubtless 
this  volume  had  much  to  do  with  the  bestowal  upon 
the  still  rather  youthful  pastor  of  the  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Divinity  by  Hamilton  College  in  1842. 

This  repute  as  an  interesting  interpreter  of  history 
led  to  frequent  calls  on  Dr.  Bacon  for  commemorative 
occasions.  Thus,  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  1840,  he 
spoke  in  his  own  pulpit  on  The  Goodly  Heritage  of 
Connecticut?  and,  in  May,  1843,  at  Hartford,  before 
the  Connecticut  Historical  Society,  on  the  Early  Con- 
stitutional History  of  Connecticut.  5  As  the  best 
equipped  of  the  graduates  of  Andover,  it  fell  to  him 
to  deliver  the  Commemorative  Discourse  *  at  the  cele- 
bration in  August,  1858,  of  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of 
the  founding  of  the  Seminary;  and  a  similar  sense  of 
preeminent  fitness  induced  the  Connecticut  General 
Association  to  call  upon  Dr.  Bacon  for  a  Historical 
Discourse*  in  June,  1859,  on  tne  completion  of  a  cent- 

1  Published  at  New  Haven,  1840.       ^  Published  at  Hartford,  1843. 

3  A  Memorial  of  the  Semi-Centennial  Celebration  of  the  Founding  of 
the  Theological  Seminary  at  Andover,  pp.  70-113.     Andover,  1859. 

4  Contributions  to  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of  Connecticut,  pp.  1-72. 
New  Haven,  1861. 


LEONARD  BACON  425 

ury  and  a  half  of  its  existence.  So,  once  more,  when 
the  Connecticut  General  Conference  celebrated  the 
centennial  of  American  national  life,  in  1876,  Dr. 
Bacon  gave  the  address  on  The  Relations  of  the  Con- 
gregational Churches  of  Connecticut  to  Civil  Govern- 
ment, and  to  Popular  Education  and  Social  Reforms, 
during  the  period  antecedent  to  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.1 

Naturally  Dr.  Bacon  was  interested  in  local  history. 
A  charter  member  of  the  New  Haven  Historical  So- 
ciety and  a  director  from  its  organization  in  1862,  he 
presented  before  it,  in  1863,  the  results  of  his  studies 
regarding  the  development  of  Civil  Government  in 
New  Haven  Colony?  On  repeated  occasions  in  his 
own  pulpit,  as  on  the  fortieth  anniversary  of  his  settle- 
ment, in  March,  1865, 3  and  on  the  completion  of  his 
fiftieth  year  of  connection  with  the  church  of  his 
ministry,4  he  gave  sermons  of  rare  felicity  of  expres- 
sion and  of  much  historic  and  autobiographic  interest. 
The  centennial  of  American  independence  drew  from 
Dr.  Bacon  an  address  on  New  Haven  One  Hundred 
Years  Ago;*  and  in  1879  ne  published  Three  Civic 

1  Centennial  Papers  Published  by  Order  of  the  General  Conference  of 
the  Congregational  Churches  of  Connecticut,  pp.   145-170.      Hartford, 

1877. 

2  Papers  of  the  New  Haven  Historical  Society,  i.,  pp.  11-27. 

3  In  Four  Commemorative  Discourses,   New  Haven,    1866 ;  see  also 
the  Commemorative  Volume,  entitled  Leorrard Bacon,  etc.,  pp.  75-104. 

4  Half-Century  Sermon,  New  Haven,  1875  ',  also  m  the  Commemora- 
tive Volume,  pp.  119-135.  °  Published  at  New  Haven,  1876. 


426  LEONARD  BACON 

Orations  for  New  Haven ,  in  which  he  further  served 
the  city  of  his  pastorate. 

The  most  important  as  well  as  the  most  extensive  of 
Dr.  Bacon's  later  contributions  to  history  was, however, 
his  volume  of  1874,  entitled  The  Genesis  of  the  New 
England  Churches?  in  which  he  narrated  with  filial  and 
graphic  pen  the  story  of  Congregationalism  from  its  be- 
ginnings to  its  full  establishment  on  New  England  soil 
by  the  addition  to  the  Separatist  colony  of  Plymouth  of 
the  Puritan  settlement  of  Salem  —  the  forerunner  of 
the  Puritan  emigration  which  made  New  England 
strong.  Perhaps  this  proportioning  of  the  story  indi- 
cates, what  was  the  fact,  that  Dr.  Bacon's  sympathies 
were  more  with  the  independent  aspects  of  Congrega- 
tionalism than  with  its  centralizing  tendencies. 

Dr.  Bacon's  interest  in  the  history  of  New  England 
was  manifested  to  the  close  of  his  life;  two  of  his 
latest  publications  being  an  address  on  The  Providen- 
tial Selection  and  Training  of  the  Pilgrim  Pioneers  of 
New  England?  in  1880;  and  a  paper  on  Old  Times  in 
Connecticut?  printed  in  1882,  after  his  death. 

Such  interest  in  the  history  of  Congregationalism 
was  naturally  accompanied  by  an  acquaintance  with 
the  details  of  its  polity  and  a  desire  to  extend  its  influ- 
ence. Dr.  Bacon's  first  essay  in  the  practical  application 
of  Congregational  principles  —  the  Manual  for  Young 

1  Published  at  New  York.  '2  Hartford,  1880. 

3  New  Haven,  1882,  reprinted  from  the  New  Englander,  xli.,  pp.  1-31. 


LEONARD  BACON  427 

Church  Members,  of  1833 — has  already  been  men- 
tioned. His  next  exposition  of  Congregational  usages 
was  a  careful  Digest  of  the  Rules  and  Usages  in  the  Con- 
sociations and  Associations  of  Connecticut 1 —  a  compila- 
tion and  condensation  as  clear,  as  technical,  as  accurate, 
as  valuable  for  reference,  and  as  uninteresting  for  gen- 
eral reading  as  a  code  of  criminal  law.  This  task  was 
performed  as  a  member  of  a  committee  appointed  by 
the  General  Association  of  Connecticut  of  which  Dr. 
Bacon  was  chairman. 

Dr.  Bacon's  most  ambitious  draft  of  a  system  of 
church  polity  was  made  more  than  twenty  years  later 
than  his  Digest.  The  Conference  of  Committees  which 
prepared  the  way  for  the  National  Council  of  our  Con- 
gregational churches  that  assembled  at  Boston  in  June, 
1865,  appointed  Dr.  Bacon,  Rev.  Dr.  A.  H.  Quint,-and 
Rev.  Dr.  Henry  M.  Storrs  a  committee  to  prepare  a 
statement  of  polity  for  submission  to  the  Council. 
Such  a  statement  Dr.  Bacon  drafted,  on  the  model  of 
the  Cambridge  Platform,  and  it  was  duly  laid  before  the 
Council,  which  referred  it,  after  a  spirited  debate  in 
which  Dr.  Bacon  bore  large  part,  to  a  numerous  com- 
mittee.2 By  this  committee  it  was  somewhat  amended, 
and  at  length,  in  1872,  was  reported  to  the  churches.3 

1  Congregational  Order,  pp.  289-322.     Middletown,  1843. 

2  Debates  and  Proceedings  of  the.  National  Council  of  the  Congrega- 
tional Churches,   held  at  Boston,  Mass.,  June  14—24.,  186$,  pp.  9,  IO, 
101-115,  117-129,  427-464.     Boston,  1866. 

3  Ecclesiastical  Polity.      The  Government  and  Communion  Practised 


428  LEONARD  BACON 

This  document,  generally  known  as  the  "  Boston  Plat- 
form," was  the  fruit  of  great  labor,  and  deserved  a 
better  fate  than  the  oblivion  which  immediately  over- 
took it;  but  extended  platforms  of  polity  are  doubtless 
as  little  acceptable  to  the  Congregational  churches  of 
the  present  as  the  minute  statements  of  faith  in  which 
the  seventeenth  century  delighted. 

Such  a  man  as  Dr.  Bacon,  of  active  temperament 
and  ready  willingness  to  bear  his  part  in  public  efforts 
for  the  advancement  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  was 
naturally  largely  interested  in  organized  Christian 
work.  Thus,  from  1825  to  1829,  he  was  the  Secretary 
of  the  Domestic  Missionary  Society  of  Connecticut, 
and  one  of  its  directors  from  1832  to  1869.  In  1837 
he  became  a  director  of  the  American  Bible  Society, 
and,  in  1845,  °f  tne  American  Tract  Society.  From 
1842  till  his  death,  he  was  a  corporate  member  of  the 
American  Board;  from  1841  till  1862,  he  served  as  a 
director  of  what  is  now  the  Congregational  Home 
Missionary  Society,  a  position  which  he  exchanged 
in  the  latter  year  for  the  vice-presidency  of  the  cor- 
poration; and  from  1844  to  the  close  of  his  life  he 
had  an  official  part  in  promoting  Christian  education 
in  the  newer  sections  of  the  country,  at  first  as  a  direc- 
tor of  the  Society  for  Promoting  Collegiate  and  Theo- 
logical Education  at  the  West,  and  then  of  the 

by  the  Congregational  Churches  in  the  United  States  of  America. 
Boston,  1872. 


LEONARD  BACON  429 

American  College  and  Education  Society  into  which 
the  longer-named  organization  was  merged  in  1874. 

His  connection  with  the  two  associations  last  men- 
tioned may  well  remind  us  that  Dr.  Bacon  never  forgot 
that  he  was  the  son  of  a  western  missionary ;  and  that 
recollection,  coupled  with  his  sturdy  belief  in  Congre- 
gationalism as  a  polity  suited  to  all  parts  of  our  land, 
fitted  him  to  do  a  great  work  for  Congregational 
advancement  in  connection  with  the  Albany  Conven- 
tion of  1852,  and  the  movements  that  flowed  from  that 
significant  assembly.  It  has  already  been  pointed  out 
in  this  lecture  that,  at  the  time  of  Dr.  Bacon's  settle- 
ment in  New  Haven,  Congregationalism  had  about 
reached  its  lowest  depth  of  self-distrust,  and  that  a 
large  proportion  of  Congregationalists  emigrating  be- 
yond the  Hudson  joined  or  organized  Presbyterian 
churches.  This  transformation  was  made  all  the,  easier 
by  the  "  Plan  of  Union,"  formed,  in  1801,  by  the 
Presbyterian  General  Assembly  and  the  Connecticut 
General  Association,  and  designed  to  adjust  in  a 
perfectly  equitable  manner  the  question  of  the  harmo- 
nious working  together  of  Presbyterian  and  Congre- 
gational ministers  and  church  members  in  frontier 
communities.  In  practice,  the  "  Plan  "  aided  Presby- 
terianism  and  proved  one  of  several  causes  which 
gathered  the  Congregational  settlers  of  New  York, 
Ohio,  Michigan,  and  Illinois  largely  into  the  Presby- 
terian fold.  Yet  some  Congregational  churches  were 


430  LEONARD  BACON 

organized  in  what  was  then  known  as  the  West ;  but 
they  were  looked  at  askance  by  their  Presbyterian 
neighbors,  and  to  some  extent  by  the  people  of  New 
England,  as  under  a  cloud  of  doctrinal  or  governmental 
suspicion, — an  erroneous  view,  which  the  local  eccen- 
tricities displayed  by  early  Oberlin  tended  to  foster 
rather  than  to  dispel. 

It  was  to  secure  a  better  understanding  in  both  East 
and  West  and  to  plan  effectively  for  Congregational 
advancement  that  agitation  was  begun  in  Michigan  by 
Rev.  L.  Smith  Hobart  as  early  as  1845,  and  furthered 
by  the  General  Association  of  New  York,  led  by  Rev. 
Dr.  Joseph  P.  Thompson.  This  discussion  resulted 
in  the  meeting  at  Albany,  in  October,  1852,  of  a  Con- 
vention representative  of  any  Congregational  church 
that  chose  to  send  its  pastor  and  a  delegate,  and  in- 
cluding a  large  proportion  of  those  in  our  body ' 
conspicuous  for  leadership. 

By  the  unanimous  vote  of  this  Convention  the 
"  Plan  of  Union"  was  abrogated;  a  greater  inter- 
course between  the  Congregationalists  of  the  East 
and  West  was  urged;  "  insinuations  and  charges  of 
heresy  in  doctrine  and  disorder  in  practice  "  were 
discountenanced  ;  an  unanimous  declaration  was 
adopted  that  the  missionary  societies  should  support 

1  It  included  four  hundred  and  sixty-three  pastors  and  delegates  from 
seventeen  States.  For  its  work,  see  Proceedings  of  the  General  Conven- 
tion of  Congregational  Ministers  and  Delegates  in  the  United  States, 
New  York,  1852. 


LEONARD  BACON"  431 

only  such  ministers  in  slave  States  as  would  "  so 
preach  the  Gospel  .  .  .  that,  with  the  blessing  of 
God,  it  shall  have  its  full  effect  in  awakening  and  en- 
lightening the  moral  sense  in  regard  to  slavery,  and 
in  bringing  to  pass  the  speedy  abolition  of  that  stu- 
pendous wrong."  A  call  was  issued  for  $50,000 — 
that  proved  to  be  nearly  $62,000  when  the  response 
came — to  assist  struggling  churches  to  procure  meet- 
ing-houses in  Ohio,  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Iowa, 
Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri,  and  Minnesota.  In  all 
this  significant  work  Dr.  Bacon  was  the  foremost 
figure,  not  only  as  chairman  of  the  Business  Com- 
mittee, to  which,  in  the  first  instance,  action  on  these 
matters  was  due,  but  as  the  ablest  and  most  convincing 
of  all  the  keen-minded  debaters  who  led  the  Conven- 
tion's deliberations.  And  in  the  more  permanent 
organization  that  sprang  from  the  Convention  and 
crystallized  its  work  Dr.  Bacon  was  eminent  in  service. 
When  the  American  Congregational  Union  —  now 
much  more  appropriately  known  as  the  Church  Build- 
ing Society — was  formed  in  May,  1853,  "  to  collect, 
preserve,  and  publish  authentic  information  concern- 
ing the  history,  condition,  and  continual  progress  of 
the  Congregational  churches  "  and  "  to  promote— by 
tracts  and  books,  by  devising  and  recommending  to 
the  public  plans  of  cooperation  in  building  meeting- 
houses and  parsonages —  .  .  .  the  progress  and 

1  Ibid.,  p.  21. 


432  LEONARD  BACON 

well-working  of  the  Congregational  polity,"  Dr.  Bacon 
was  chosen  the  first  president  of  the  new  society,  and 
continued  to  hold  this  office  until  1871. 

Of  his  prominence  in  the  next  National  Council 
of  Congregationalism — that  held  at  Boston  in  1865 — 
there  has  already  been  occasion  to  speak  in  de- 
scribing the  Platform  of  Church  Polity  which  he 
then  presented.  The  first  of  our  modern  series  of 
triennial  Councils,  at  Oberlin,  in  1871,  had  Dr.  Bacon 
for  its  preacher.  The  second  he  welcomed  to  his 
church  edifice  in  New  Haven,  in  1874;  and  he  was 
heard  gladly  and  influentially  in  both.  Yet  it  is  but 
just  to  remark  that  Dr.  Bacon  was  so  much  of  an  In- 
dependent in  his  type  of  Congregationalism  that  he 
did  not  approve  the  creation  of  a  representative  Na- 
tional Council,  meeting  at  stated  intervals,  lest  it 
interfere  at  length  with  the  freedom  of  the  churches,1 
and  he  therefore  looked  with  some  degree  of  disfavor 
on  an  effort  to  unite  the  wisdom  and  suggest  the 
policy  of  our  widely  scattered  churches,  which  to  most 
has  seemed  to  contain  nothing  but  good. 

The  first  thirty  years  of  Dr.  Bacon's  pastorate  were 
a  time  of  heated  controversies  in  the  Congregational 
and  Presbyterian  communions,  and  the  New  Haven 
pastor  had  his  full  share  in  them.  Yet  his  participa- 
tion was,  in  general,  other  in  intention  and  effect  from 
that  which  the  nickname,  "  the  fighting  parson,"  often 

1  Pres.  Woolsey,  in  Commemorative  Volume,  p.  232. 


LEONARD  BACON  433 

applied  to  him  in  those  days,  would  lead  one  to  sup- 
pose.1 His  influence  was,  as  a  whole,  irenic  and  con- 
ciliatory, because  his  sympathies  within  the  lines  of 
evangelical  truth,  though  largely  "  new  school,"  were 
also  broadly  catholic.  Dr.  Bacon's  efforts  were  rather 
to  prevent  than  to  foster  ecclesiastical  division,  and 
in  his  own  State  certainly  they  had  a  marked  effect. 

Dr.  Bacon's  earliest  participation  in  an  ecclesiastical 
discussion  of  the  first  magnitude,  as  such  controversies 
then  appeared,  came  almost  by  chance.  So  intimate 
were  the  relations  of  Congregationalists  and  Presby- 
terians at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
that,  from  1794  onward  to  the  rupture  of  the  Presby- 
terian body  in  1837,  the  Connecticut  General  Associa- 
tion and  the  Presbyterian  General  Assembly  each  sent 
delegates  who  enjoyed  full  powers  of  voting  in  the 
sessions  of  the  other  body — an  exchange  which~<was 
afterwards  shared  by  the  General  Associations  of  Mas- 
sachusetts and  New  Hampshire,  the  General  Conven- 
tion of  Vermont,  and  the  Evangelical  Consociation  of 
Rhode  Island. 

Yet  within  the  Presbyterian  Church  itself  two 
parties  were  rapidly  drawing  into  antagonism  as  the 
first  four  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  advanced. 
Of  these  parties,  that  soon  known  as  the  "  Old 
School  "  represented  in  large  measure  the  Scotch- 
Irish  and  less  inclusive  element  in  the  Church,  strict 

1  Compare  the  remarks  of  G.  L.  Walker,  ibid.,  pp.  178,  179. 
28 


434  LEONARD  BACON 

in  its  adhesion  to  the  older  Calvinism,  a  party  in 
doctrinal  position  substantially  identical  with  the  Old 
Calvinists  of  eighteenth-century  New  England,  but 
more  intense  in  feeling.  The  opposite,  or  "  New- 
School  "  party,  was  composed  largely  of  men  of  New 
England  antecedents,  who  sympathized  generally  with 
the  Edwardeanism  that,  by  1830,  had  become  almost 
universally  prevalent  in  New  England.  This  Ed- 
wardean  theology  had,  as  we  have  seen,  many  shades; 
but  its  general  points  of  contrast  to  the  Old  Calvinism, 
both  of  earlier  New  England  and  of  existent  Presby- 
terianism  were  well  stated  by  Dr.  Bacon  as  follows : ' 

"  Of  these  views,  one  was  the  doctrine  of  general  atone- 
ment, or  that  Christ's  expiatory  death  was  for  all  men,  and 
not  exclusively  for  an  elected  portion  of  mankind.  An- 
other was  the  rejection  of  the  theory  of  imputation,  in  the 
sense  of  a  transfer  of  personal  qualities,  or  of  responsibil- 
ities. A  third  was  the  opinion,  strongly  maintained,  that 
there  is  in  man  as  fallen,  no  physical  impotency  to  obey 
God's  requirements;  that  the  inability  which  hinders  men 
from  coming  to  Christ  till  they  are  drawn  by  Almighty 
grace,  is  an  inability  not  of  the  constitutional  faculties,  but 
only  of  the  voluntary  moral  disposition." 

The  alarm  felt  by  the  "  Old  School "  party  over  the 
spread  in  Presbyterian  ranks  of  such  common  Ed- 
wardean  views  as  have  just  been  noted  was  greatly 
intensified  from  1830  onward  by  the  rise  of  that  modi- 
fication of  Edwardeanism  known  as  "  New  Haven 

1  Views  and  Reviews,  i.,  pp.  52,  53.     New  Haven,  1840. 


LEONARD  BACON  435 

Theology,"  of  which  Professor  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor 
was  the  champion.  And  the  contest  in  Presbyterian 
ranks  between  those  who  were  willing  to  tolerate  and 
those  who  opposed  New  England  presentations  of 
doctrine  was  brought  to  a  head  by  the  dispute  occa- 
sioned by  the  settlement  of  Albert  Barnes  over  the 
First  Presbyterian  Church  in  Philadelphia. 

It  so  happened  that  the  young  New  Haven  pastor, 
as  a  delegate  from  Connecticut,  was  a  member  of  the 
General  Assembly  of  1831,  before  which  first  came  the 
question  of  the  orthodoxy  of  the  sermon  in  which  Al- 
bert Barnes  had  expressed  Edwardean  views.  Dr. 
Bacon  was  appointed  upon  the  committee  to  which 
the  case  was  referred.1  Naturally,  his  sympathies 
were  with  the  comparatively  catholic  and  largely  New- 
England-born  wing  which  was  soon  to  become  the 
excluded  "New  School  "  party,  rather  than  with  their 
"  Old  School"  opponents;  but  his  youth,  his  self- 
control,  and  his  position  as  a  representative  of  another 
body  prevented  him  from  taking  any  leading  part  in 
the  discussion.3 

Contemporary  with  these  disruptive  debates  in  the 
Presbyterian  Church,  and  to  some  extent  contributing 
to  them,  ran  the  heated  Taylor  and  Tyler  controversy 
in  Connecticut,  at  which  we  glanced  in  the  last  lecture. 

1  Minutes  of  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  vii., 
pp.  176,  180,  181. 

2  Dr.  Bacon  gave  a  full  account  of  this  session  in  the  New  Englander, 
xxviii.,  pp.  173-180, 


436  LEONARD  BACON 

As  Dr.  Taylor's  personal  friend  and  successor  in  the 
New  Haven  pastorate,  from  which  Taylor  had  gone  to 
the  theological  chair  at  Yale,  Dr.  Bacon  warmly 
sympathized  with  the  "  New  Haven  Theology;  "  but 
the  feature  of  this  controversy  which  seems  most  to 
have  excited  his  concern  was  the  possible  division  of 
the  Connecticut  churches  into  two  warring  denomina- 
tions as  a  consequence  of  the  foundation  of  a  new 
theological  seminary  —  now  Hartford  Seminary  —  at 
East  Windsor  Hill,  by  Dr.  Tyler  and  his  sympathizers 
in  1834.  This  is  the  ground  note  of  Dr.  Bacon's 
Seven  Letters  to  the  Rev.  George  A.  Calhoun  [of  Coven- 
try] concerning  the  Pastoral  Union  of  Connecticut, 
originally  published  in  the  New  Haven  Record,  and 
reprinted  as  a  pamphlet  in  1840;  and  of  the  sequel  to 
these  letters,  the  Appeal  to  the  Congregational  Ministers 
of  Connecticut  against  a  Division,  of  the  same  year.1 
In  these  tracts,  which  constitute  Dr.  Bacon's  chief 
contribution  to  the  dispute  then  disturbing  Connecti- 
cut, the  writer  defended  the  orthodoxy  of  the  New 
Haven  divines  with  ardor,  and  attacked  their  oppo- 
nents with  vigor  and  some  personal  severity;  but  the 
most  characteristic  passage  is  that  in  which  he  pointed 
out  the  substantial  agreement  of  both  parties  on 
twenty-six  important  articles  of  the  Christian  faith,  and 
urged  that  though  "  there  are  differences  in  the  pres- 
ent case,  differences  of  no  slight  moment  in  respect 

1  Published  at  New  Haven  in  1840  as  Views  and  Reviews,  Nos.  I  and  2. 


LEONARD  BACON  437 

to  the  illustration  and  defense  of  that  evangelical  system 
which  both  parties  agree  in  holding,"  "  there  may," 
nevertheless,  "  be  differences,  of  great  importance  to 
the  science  of  theology,  among  brethren  who  have  yet 
no  occasion  to  exscind  or  renounce  each  other."  ' 

Fierce  as  was  the  controversy  aroused  in  Connecti- 
cut by  what  Dr.  Bacon  regarded  "  as  a  great  work  " 
done  by  the  New  Haven  divines  "  for  the  liberation 
of  New  England  Calvinism  from  certain  traditional 
encumbrances"2 — a  work  which  certain  other  good 
men  in  the  State  estimated  in  very  different  fashion  — 
it  was  largely  forgotten,  as  the  century  was  passing  its 
middle  point,  in  the  debates  occasioned  by  the  publica- 
tions of  Horace  Bushnell.  Dr.  Bushnell's  theology 
was  a  departure  from  the  Edwardeanism  which  had 
dominated  Connecticut  for  more  than  half  a  century  and 
which  was  represented  alike  by  the  theologians  of  East 
Windsor  Hill  and  of  New  Haven.  In  his  first  impor- 
tant publication,  that  on  Christiai^Nurture,  in  1847, 
Dr.  Bushnell  went  back  from  the  Edwardean  emphasis 
on  a  conscious  conversion  as  the  ordinary  means  of 
entrance  into  the  kingdom  of  God,  to  the  pre- 
Edwardean  New  England  view  of  the  covenant  conse- 
quences of  membership  in  a  Christian  family,  though 
he  presented  his  thoughts  in  a  very  modern  way.  In 
his  opinion,  a  child  in  a  Christian  household  should 

1  Views  and  Reviews,  No.  2,  pp.  36-43. 

2  New  Englander,  xxxviii.,  p.  702. 


438  LEONARD  BACON 

"  grow  up  a  Christian,"  and  never  know  himself  as 
being  otherwise ;  and  that,  for  such  a  child,  a  great 
change  of  experience  is  not  necessary.1 

This  argument,  so  foreign  to  the  prevailing  concep- 
tions of  New  England  at  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  made  much  commotion ;  but  the  stir  was 
greatly  increased  when,  in  1849,  Bushnell  put  forth 
his  volume  entitled  God  in  Christ.  Affirming  that  the 
Trinity  is  a  truth  of  Christian  experience,  he  held,  in 
this  work,  that  the  Godhead  is  "  instrumentally  three 
—three  simply  as  related  to  our  finite  apprehension, 
and  the  communication  of  God's  incommunicable 
nature."  a  In  the  same  volume,  Bushnell  advanced  a 
view  of  the  atonement  which  denied  to  the  great  sacri- 
fice any  penally  satisfactory  or  governmental  signifi- 
cance, and  held  that  in  estimating  the  work  of  Christ 
we  must  regard  "  everything  done  by  him  as  done  for 
expression  before  us,  and  thus  for  effect  in  us." 

Dr.  Bushnell's  views  were  at  once  attacked  ;  but  the 
Hartford  Central  Association,  of  which  he  was  a  mem- 
ber, decided,  after  full  discussion,  not  to  proceed 
against  him,  and  proved  his  bulwark  in  all  the  succeed- 
ing controversy.4  Yet  in  this  the  Association  was 
quite  out  of  harmony  with  the  feeling  of  probably  a 

1  Christian  Nurture,  pp.  6,  7.     Boston,  1847. 

2  God  in  Christ,  p.  177. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  237. 

4  See  Rev.  Dr.  E.  P.  Parker,   The  Hartford  Central  Association  and 
the  Bushnell  Controversy.     Hartford,  1896. 


LEONARD  BACON  439 

majority  of  the  ministers  of  Connecticut;  and,  by 
June,  1850,  the  Fairfield  West  Association  laid  the 
case  before  the  General  Association  of  the  State.  The 
struggle  that  followed  in  successive  meetings  of 
the  General  Association  was  strenuous,  and  threatened 
to  become  divisive.  A  positive  decision  in  favor  of 
either  party  would  have  resulted  in  two  denomina- 
tions. That  this  greater  evil  was  avoided  was  due 
more,  possibly,  than  to  any  other  influence,  to  the 
ability  and  statesmanlike  temper  of  Dr.  Bacon,  notably 
at  the  meeting  of  the  General  Association  in  1853. 
Dr.  Bacon,  though  a  personal  friend  of  Dr.  Bushnell, 
was  far  from  sympathizing  with  all  his  opinions; '  but 
he  deprecated  division,  and  when  a  petition  signed  by 
fifty-one  Connecticut  ministers  was  laid  before  the 
General  Association,  calling  upon  that  body  to  exclude 
from  its  fellowship  the  Hartford  Central  Association 
of  which  Dr.  Bushnell  was  a  member,  Dr.  Bacon 
secured  the  passage  of  a  resolution  by  the  General  As- 
sociation, the  point  of  which,  like  that  of  many  similar 
important  decisions,  was  in  what  it  did  not  say,  but 
which  made  hopeless  the  attempts  to  coerce  Dr.  Bush- 
nell and  his  supporters.  This  resolution  affirmed 3 

that  "the  opinions  imputed  to  Dr.  Bushnell  by  the  complain- 
ants, and  the  imputation  of  which  is  no  doubt  warranted, 
if  the  constructions  are  just  which  they  conscientiously 

1  New  Englander,  xxxviii.,  p.  7°2- 

2  Minutes  of  the  General  Association  of  Conn.,  p.  9,  1853. 


44O  LEONARD  BACON 

give  to  certain  quotations  from  his  published  books, 
are  opinions  with  which  the  ministers  in  the  churches 
of  Connecticut,  as  represented  in  this  General  Associa- 
tion, have  no  fellowship,  and  the  profession  of  which  on 
the  part  of  candidates  for  the  ministry,  ought  to  prevent 
their  receiving  the  license  or  approbation  of  any  of  our 
Associations." 

It  did  not  affirm,  however,  and  it  was  intended  not 
to  affirm,  that  the  opinions  complained  of  were  in 
reality  justly  chargeable  on  Dr.  Bushnell,  and  it  left 
the  question  as  to  whether  or  not  he  really  held  cen- 
surable views  a  matter  of  individual  opinion. 

It  will  be  seen,  from  the  story  as  thus  far  narrated, 
that  Dr.  Bacon's  sympathies  were  with  the  more 
liberal  movements  of  his  day  in  the  evangelical 
churches  of  New  England,  but  that,  in  the  main,  his 
efforts  were  irenic.  This  catholic  tendency  of  his 
mind  increased  with  years,  and  was  never  more 
marked  than  in  his  old  age.  At  the  same  time, 
it  should  be  remarked  that  partly  by  reason  of  his 
opposition  to  the  coercive  use  of  the  ecclesiastical 
system  of  Connecticut,  partly  by  reason  of  his  own 
native  inclination  to  a  type  of  Congregationalism 
which  emphasized  the  independence  of  our  churches, 
he  contributed  powerfully  to  the  breakdown  of  the 
peculiar  consociational  organization  of  the  State  of 
his  ministry,  and  its  practical  assimilation  into  what 
may  be  called  the  normal  present  type  of  American 
Congregationalism. 


LEONARD  BACON  441 

Dr.  Bacon's  interests,  or  rather  his  conceptions  of  his 
ministerial  privileges  and  duties,  were  much  wider 
than  the  bounds  of  his  parish  or  the  ecclesiastical  dis- 
cussions of  his  State.  O|"the  first  Thanksgiving  after 
his  settlement,  it  is  instructive  to  note,  he  made  the 
theme  of  his  discourse  the  betterment  of  the  public 
schools,  then  in  sore  need  of  reformation  and  develop- 
ment.1 The  topic  thus  chosen  by  the  youthful  pastor 
was  illustrative  of  his  wide  interest  in  the  practical 
questions  of  his  time  and  his  readiness  to  enter  into 
their  debate.  And  in  the  discussion  of  such  themes 
Dr.  Bacon  had  the  instincts  and  the  ready  pen  of  a 
born  journalist,  so  that  not  a  little  of  his  most  useful 
work  was  as  an  editor. 

His  editorial  labors  began  early.  In  1826,  a  year 
after  his  settlement  in  New  Haven,  he  became 
editor  of  the  Christian  Spectator,  a  monthly  that  later 
became  a  quarterly,  published  in  the  city  of  his  minis- 
try, and  sympathetic,  in  a  general  way,  with  the  rising 
"  New  Haven  Theology."  But  Dr.  Bacon's  editorial 
zeal  was  not  strongly  enlisted  in  purely  theologic 
controversy.  As  his  lifelong  friend,  President  Noah 
Porter,  has  remarked  of  his  connection  with  this  mag- 
azine, "  His  contributions  were  chiefly  literary,  and 
ethical,  and  reformatory,  rather  than  theological." 
The  reformer  was  always  stronger  within  him  than  the 

1  Leonard  Bacon,  in  Commemorative  Volume,  p.  90, 
*  Ibid.,  p.  220. 


442  LEONARD  BACON 

theologic  partisan.     Dr.  Bacon's  service  on  the  Spec- 
tator continued  till  1838. 

The  year  1843  witnessed  the  next  step  in  his  edito- 
rial career  in  the  foundation,  chiefly  through  his  initia- 
tive and  labors,  of  the  New  Englander,  a  magazine 
designed  to  be,  as  he  declared  in  the  first  issue,  "  on 
the  side  of  order,  of  freedom,  of  simple  and  spiritual 
Christianity,  and  of  the  Bible  as  the  infallible,  suffi- 
cient, and  only  authority  in  religion,"  '  rather  than 
the  organ  of  any  of  the  theological  parties  into  which 
New  England  was  divided.  Dr.  Bacon  remained  on 
the  editorial  committee  of  the  New  Englander  for  over 
a  score  of  years,  nor  did  he  cease  his  contributions 
to  its  pages  while  he  lived.  A  list  drawn  up  nineteen 
years  after  the  magazine  was  founded  credited  sixty- 
two  titles  to  his  authorship,  and  probably  over  a  hun- 
dred articles  in  all  were  from  his  pen.  It  is  instructive 
to  note  some  of  the  topics  discussed  in  these  witty, 
discriminating,  and  earnest  papers,  as  illustrative  of 
the  breadth  of  Dr.  Bacon's  interests.  The  first  of  the 
long  series  was  in  advocacy  of  the  reduction  of  the 
rate  of  postage  and  the  improvement  of  the  postal 
service,  then  exorbitant  in  price  and  inefficient  in 
delivery.3  Ministerial  education  and  public  libraries 
were  topics  on  which  he  had  something  to  say;3  capi- 
tal punishment  he  deemed  worthy  of  discussion;4  the 

1  New  Englander,  i.,  p.  8. 

2  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  9  ;  Hi.,  p.  536. 

3  Ibid.,  i.,  pp.  126,  307.  *  Ibid.,  iv.,  p.  563. 


LEONARD  BACON  443 

conduct  of  public  worship  and  the  development  of 
music  as  one  of  its  elements  were  to  him  congenial 
themes.1  Some  articles  were  critiques  of  Episcopal 
pretensions,2  others  expositions  and  defenses  of  Con- 
gregational history,3  yet  others  biographic  studies;4 
and  all  along  ran  a  series  of  trenchant  criticisms  on  the 
politics  of  the  years  which  saw  the  growth  of  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  slave  power,  from  the  war  with  Mexico 
to  the  attack  on  Fort  Sumter. 

Of  Dr.  Bacon's  third,  and  on  the  whole  most  im- 
portant, editorial  labor,  his  participation  in  founding 
the  Independent,  in  1848,  and  of  his  service  as  one  of 
its  editors  till  1863,  there  will  be  speedy  occasion  to 
speak  in  another  connection. 

Two  of  Dr.  Bacon's  reformatory  efforts  deserve 
special  attention ;  and  both  were  labors  which  cost 
him  the  friendship  of  some  of  his  congregation  and 
of  many  outside.  When  he  was  installed  in  his  New 
Haven  pastorate  the  temperance  reform  was  just 
beginning  to  be  felt.  But  the  conservatism  character- 
istic of  Connecticut  led  the  New  Haven  Ecclesiastical 
Society  to  provide  a  generous  entertainment  for  the 
installing  council,  which  included,  to  quote  Dr.  Bacon's 

1  New  Englander,  vii.,  p.  350  ;  xiii.,  p.  450. 

2  Ibid,,  i.,  pp.  545,   586  ;  ii.,  pp.  175,  309,  440  ;  iii.,  p.  284;  vii.,  p. 
143,  etc. 

3  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  250;    iv.,  p.   288  ;    xi.,  p.   136;  xviii.,  pp.  711,  1020 ; 
xix.,  p.  437,  etc. 

4  Ibid.,  vi.,  p.  603  ;  viii.,  p.  388  ;  x.,  pp.  42,  488. 


444  LEONARD  BACON 

own  words  used  forty  years  later  in  describing  the 
event,  "  an  ample  supply  not  only  of  wine  but  also  of 
more  perilous  stuff."  The  tone  of  the  community 
was  such — and  New  Haven  did  not  differ  materially 
from  the  rest  of  New  England  in  this  respect — that, 
to  quote  Dr.  Bacon  again,  "  none  could  abstain  from 
the  personal  use  of  those  liquors  without  incurring  the 
reproach  of  eccentricity  and  perhaps  of  moroseness." 
But  a  reform  movement  was  just  beginning;  and, 
though  it  meant  running  counter  to  the  prejudices  of 
many  of  his  congregation,  the  young  pastor  threw 
himself  into  it  with  characteristic  energy.  In  1829 
he  published  a  pamphlet  urging  Total  Abstinence 
from  Ardent  Spirits.  Again,  in  1838,  he  printed 
a  very  plain-spoken  sermon  on  the  theme,  directed 
especially  against  the  saloon  where  liquor  is  sold 
by  the  glass;3  and  later  he  enforced  in  repeated 
sermons  the  same  reform.4  And  he  had  the  satis- 
faction of  being  able  to  record,  in  the  discourses  com- 
memorative of  the  completion  of  forty  years  of  his 
pastorate,  the  change  wrought  by  these  and  associ- 
ated efforts :  5 

1  Commemorative  Volume,  p.  92. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  91. 

3  A  Discourse  on  the  Traffic  in  Spirituous  Liquors,  Delivered  in  the 
Centre  Church,  New  Haven,  Feb.  6,  1838.     New  Haven,  1838. 

4  Sermon  before  the  Washington    Temperance  Society  of  New  Haven, 
New  Haven,  1843.      The  Christian  Basis  of  the  Temperance  Reforma- 
tion, in  the  American  Temperance  Preacher,  January,  1848. 

5  Commemorative  Volume,  p.  92. 


LEONARD  BACON  445 

"  In  a  little  while  the  tyrannical  fashion  had  lost  its 
power.  Every  man  was  at  liberty  to  practice  personal 
abstinence,  either  for  his  own  safety  or  for  the  sake  of  sav- 
ing others;  and  there  was  no  law  of  hospitality  requiring 
any  man  to  tempt  his  guests  by  inviting  them  to  drink  with 
him." 

The  most  important  of  Dr.  Bacon's  reformatory 
efforts,  the  greatest  single  work  of  his  life,  was  his 
opposition  to  slavery.  His  ministry  began  just  as  the 
question  of  slavery  was  passing  from  the  status  of  a 
moral  reform  earnestly  desired  by  good  men  both  in 
the  North  and  in  the  South — though  without  any 
very  definite  views  as  to  how  the  reform  was  to  be 
effected  where  the  institution  was  intrenched — to  the 
position  of  a  political  question  on  which  parties 
were  gradually  to  range  for  an  inevitable  conflict. 
The  Missouri  Compromise,  effected  in  Congress  when 
Leonard  Bacon  was  half-way  through  his  Senior  year 
at  Yale,  marks  the  beginning  of  this  new  stage  of  the 
question  —  the  struggle  for  the  extension  of  slavery 
into  the  new  Territories  of  the  West.  At  Andover  the 
young  graduate  found  a  warm  anti-slavery  spirit. 
The  topic  was  one  of  frequent  debate  before  the 
Seminary  "Society  of  Inquiry;"  and  the  first  of 
Dr.  Bacon's  writings  to  have  extensive  circulation  was 
a  Report  to  that  Society  on  African  colonization,  con- 
demning slavery  in  most  positive  terms.1  This  Report, 

1  L.  W.  Bacon,  Irenics  and  Polemics,  pp.  183,  184,  New  York,  1895. 
The  Report  was  published  in  1823. 


446  LEONARD  BACON 

prepared  in  the  Senior  year  of  its  author's  Seminary 
course,  was  given  wide  publicity  by  his  fellow-students. 
Leonard  Bacon  carried  this  reformatory  spirit  with 
him  to  his  pastorate,  and  speedily  organized  in  his  new 
home  a  young  men's  club  called  the  Anti-Slavery 
Association,  from  which  grew  the  African  Improve- 
ment Society  of  New  Haven,  designed  for  the  spirit- 
ual, mental,  and  physical  elevation  of  the  local 
colored  population.1  On  the  Fourth  of  July,  1825,  the 
newly  settled  pastor  gave,  as  his  oration,  A  Plea  for 
Africa  ;  and  a  year  later,  on  the  same  anniversary  of 
freedom,  he  declared  that :  * 

"  Public  opinion  throughout  the  free  States  must  hold  a 
different  course  on  the  subject  of  slavery  from  that  which 
it  now  holds.  Instead  of  exhausting  itself  fruitlessly  and 
worse  than  fruitlessly  upon  the  operation  of  the  system,  it 
must  be  directed  towards  fat  principle  on  which  the  system 
rests." 

These  views  Dr.  Bacon  persistently  advocated  in 
every  channel  open  to  him,  notably  in  tKe  Christian 
Spectator,  of  which  mention  has  already  been  made. 

But  a  new  force  came  into  the  field  with  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Liberator  by  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  from 
1831  onward,  and  the  foundation  of  the  American 
Anti-Slavery  Society  by  that  vigorous  agitator  in  1832. 
In  the  thought  of  Garrison  and  his  associates  not  only 
was  slavery  a  wrong  for  which  immediate  abolition  was 

1  L.  W.  Bacon,  Irenics  and  Polemics,  pp.  184,  185.        *  Ibid.,  p.  186. 


LEONARD  BACON  447 

the  only  cure,  but  "  slaveholders  are  the  enemies  of 
God  and  man ;  their  garments  are  red  with  the  blood 
of  souls;  their  guilt  is  aggravated  beyond  the  power 
of  language  to  describe."  To  Dr.  Bacon's  thinking, 
such  indiscriminating  condemnation  of  all  slaveholders 
was  not  merely  prejudicial  to  a  good  cause,  it  was  un- 
justifiable. As  Dr.  Bacon  declared  in  1846,  in  words 
which  Abraham  Lincoln  recoined  into  a  famous 
phrase : a 

"  If  that  form  of  government,  that  system  of  social  order 
is  not  wrong, — if  those  laws  of  the  southern  states,  by  virtue 
of  which  slavery  exists  there,  and  is  what  it  is,  are  not 
wrong — nothing  is  wrong." 

But  he  added:3 

"  The  wrongfulness  of  that  entire  body  of  laws,  opinions, 
and  practices  is  one  thing  ;  and  the  criminality  of  the  in- 
dividual master,  who  tries  to  do  right,  is  another  thing." 

To  declare  the  master  who  had  received  slaves  by 
inheritance,  and  was  trying  to  do  them  good,  as  of 
practically  equal  guilt  with  the  master  who  treated  his 
slaves  as  cattle  and  sold  their  offspring  for  gain,  seemed 
to  Dr.  Bacon  a  confusion  of  moral  distinctions.  And 
so  he  fought  his  battle  with  ever-increasing  success, 
but  with  much  opposition  even  in  his  own  home, 
against  slavery  on  the  one  hand  and  against  what 
he  deemed  the  damaging  methods  of  the  extremer 

1  Garrison,  Thoughts  on  African  Colonization,  p.  67.     Boston,  1832. 

2  Slavery  Discussed  in  Occasional  Essays,  x.     New  York,  1846. 
a  Ibid. 


448  LEONARD  BACON 

abolitionists  on   the  other.     As  he  told  the  Albany 
Convention  in  1852:' 

"  I  have  always  found  myself  in  a  state  of  '  betweenity  ' 
in  relation  to  parties  on  questions  connected  with  slavery, 
so  that,  as  Baxter  said  of  himself  in  regard  to  the  contro- 
versies of  his  day,  where  other  men  have  had  one  adversary 
I  have  had  two." 

But  this  "  state  of  betweenity  "  was  no  state  of  un- 
certainty, either  in  his  own  mind  or  that  of  others,  as 
to  his  estimate  of  the  moral  turpitude  of  the  slave 
system,  and  the  duty  of  all  good  men  to  do  what  they 
could  to  overthrow  it.  To  no  leadership  did  the  sober 
judgment  of  New  England,  and  especially  of  his  own 
State,  more  positively  respond  than  to  his. 

Just  what  measures  besides  moral  opposition  to  this 
evil  were  possible  was  a  question  which  Dr.  Bacon, 
like  most  of  the  early  seekers  for  its  reform,  found 
puzzling.  For  a  long  time  he  supported  the  coloniza- 
tion plan,  which  had  been  a  favorite  among  his  friends 
at  Andover.  But  time  showed  the  hopelessness  of 
that  solution ;  and  the  course  of  political  events,  lead- 
ing, through  the  annexation  of  Texas,  to  the  conquest 
of  vast  territories  from  Mexico  —  a  conquest  accom- 
panied and  followed  by  demands  that  they  be  thrown 
open  to  slavery  —  pointed  out  the  straight  path  of 
definite  resistance  to  a  definite  aggression.  It  was 
primarily  as  a  step  forward  in  this  struggle  for  freedom 

1  Proceedings  of  the  General  Convention  .   .  .  held  at  Albany,  p.  84. 


LEONARD  BACON  449 

that  Dr.  Bacon  took  the  editorial  leadership,  with  Rev. 
Drs.  Joseph  P.  Thompson,  Richard  Salter  Storrs,  and 
Joshua  Leavitt  as  fellow-laborers,  and  with  financial 
support  furnished  by  Messrs.  Henry  C.  Bowen,  Theo- 
dore McNamee,  and  others,  in  founding  the  Indepen- 
dent, in  December,  1848,'  under  the  declaration,  "  We 
take  our  stand  for  free  soil." 

The  successive  aggressions  of  the  slave  power  led 
Dr.  Bacon,  in  his  Thanksgiving  Sermon  for  1851,  to 
support  the  view  which  William  H.  Seward  had  made 
famous  on  the  floor  of  Congress,  that  the  public  do- 
main was  dedicated  to  liberty,  not  only  by  the  Consti- 
tution but  by  a  higher  law  "  than  the  Constitution 
— a  law  which  must  not  be  disobeyed.  The  Kansas- 
Nebraska  act  moved  him  to  advocate  forcible  resistance 
to  the  introduction  of  slavery  into  the  Territories  in- 
volved. And  when  the  war  began  there  was  no  more 
strenuous  advocate  of  freedom  and  patriotism  in  the 
New  England  pulpit  than  he. 

These  labors  cost  Dr.  Bacon  much  opposition,  and 
often  from  those  whose  friendship  he  esteemed ;  but 
when  it  was  nearly  over  and  slavery  was  close  to  its 
end  he  could  say  to  his  own  congregation  : a 

"  You  know  how  I  have  been  blamed  and  even  execrated, 
in  these  later  years,  for  declaring,  here  and  elsewhere, 

1  See  Dr.  Storrs's  account,  Independent^  December  8,  1898. 

2  Two  Sermons  Preached  on  the  Fortieth  Anniversary  of  his  Settlement 
(March  12,  1865),  Commemorative  Volume,  p.  95. 


450  LEONARD  BACON 

the  wickedness  of  buying  and  selling  human  beings,  or 
of  violating  in  any  way  those  human  rights  which  are  in- 
separable from  human  nature.  I  make  no  complaint  in 
making  this  allusion;  all  reproaches,  all  insults  endured  in 
the  conflict  with  so  gigantic  a  wickedness  against  God  and 
man,  are  to  be  received  and  remembered  not  as  injuries 
but  as  honors." 

And  Dr.  Bacon  was  given  a  special  and  peculiar  grati- 
fication in  the  recollection  of  those  years  of  contro- 
versy, besides  the  larger  satisfaction  of  a  conspicuous 
share  in  the  most  momentous  work  of  his  generation. 
In  the  heat  of  the  struggle,  in  1846,  he  had  pub- 
lished at  New  York  a  small,  black-bound  volume, 
made  up  of  various  contributions  to  the  great  debate, 
under  the  title  Slavery  Discussed  in  Occasional  Essays 
from  1833  to  184.6.  The  volume  never  had  much 
of  a  circulation,  but  one  copy  reached  the  office  table 
of  Abraham  Lincoln,  then  a  comparatively  unknown 
lawyer  in  his  Illinois  home.  The  story  of  its  reception 
may  be  told  in  the  modest  words  in  which  Dr.  Bacon 
related  it  in  1865.  Speaking  of  a  visit  paid  to  the  great 
emancipating  President,  Dr.  Bacon  said : 1 

"  Less  than  four  years  ago,  not  knowing  that  he  had 
ever  heard  of  me,  I  had  the  privilege  of  an  interview  with 
him;  and  his  first  word,  after  our  introduction  to  each 
other,  was  a  reference  to  that  volume,  with  a  frank  approval 
of  its  principles.  Since  then  I  have  heard  of  his  mention- 

1  Two  Sermons  Preached  on  the  Fortieth  Anniversary  of  his  Settlement 
(March  12,  1865),  Commemorative  Volume,  p.  96. 


LEONARD  BACON  451 

ing  the  same  book  to  a  friend  of  mine  in  terms  which 
showed  that  it  had  made  an  impression  on  his  earnest  and 
thoughtful  soul." 

Dr.  Bacon  might,  without  exaggeration,  have  said 
much  more.1 

Dr.  Bacon's  work  was  complete,  to  a  degree  vouch- 
safed to  few  men,  before  he  reached  old  age.  The 
end  of  the  struggle  over  slavery  terminated  the  contest 
to  which  he  had  given  his  largest  effort.  The  contests 
over  the  "  New  Haven  Theology  "  and  over  the  views 
of  Dr.  Bushnell  had  died  away  before  the  Civil  War. 
And,  in  a  peculiar  degree,  his  old  age  was  a  time  of 
growing  ripeness  and  sweetness  of  Christian  life  as  the 
golden  sunset  drew  near.  It  was  a  life  of  activity  and 
usefulness  to  the  end. 

Dr.  Bacon  intimated,  in  a  sermon  preached  on  the 
completion  of  his  fortieth  year  of  service,  his  desire  to 
be  relieved  of  active  pastoral  responsibilities,  and  on 
September  9,  1866,  the  partial  separation  was  accom- 
plished on  terms  alike  honorable  to  pastor  and  to 
people.8  His  resignation  was  accepted,  but  he  was 
never  dismissed  by  council,  and  he  continued  to  render 
aid  to  his  successors  and  minister  to  his  people  as 
strength  and  opportunity  offered,  being  till  the  day  of 
his  death  the  pastor  emeritus  of  his  church.  Few  men 

1  L.  W.   Bacon,   Irenics  and  Polemics,  p.  198  ;    Century  Magazine, 
xxv.,  p.  658. 

2  Commemorative  Volume,  pp.  39-49,  104. 


452  LEONARD  BACON 

have  ever  borne  themselves  as  generously  in  the  often 
trying  situation  of  a  retired  minister,  compelled  to  see 
the  work  in  which  he  had  been  so  long  a  leader  pass 
into  younger  hands,  as  did  Dr.  Bacon.  His  immediate 
successor  in  the  active  work  of  the  pastorate  thus  bore 
witness  to  him  : ' 

"  He  was  the  most  magnanimous  man  I  ever  knew. 
Had  I  been  his  son  after  the  flesh  he  could  not  have  been 
more  cooperative  or  kind.  Always  ready  to  help  when 
asked,  he  never  volunteered  even  advice;  he  never  in  any 
instance  or  slightest  particular  gave  me  reason  to  wish  he 
had  said  or  done  anything  otherwise.  Apparently  incapable 
of  jealousy — even  had  there  been  vastly  more  opportunity 
for  it  than  there  was  —  he  was  to  the  pastor  who  followed 
him  a  supporter  and  a  comfort  always." 

Dr.  Bacon's  old  age  was  a  time  of  honor  in  the 
churches  and  in  the  community  at  large.  He  ranked 
in  public  repute  as  the  representative  American  Con- 
gregationalist.  Harvard  gave  him  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Laws  in  1870.  The  two  Brooklyn  Councils, 
of  1874  and  1876,  the  most  talked-of  Congregational 
advisory  bodies  of  the  last  half-century,  chose  him  as 
their  Moderator.  And  his  years  of  retirement  from 
the  pastorate  proved  a  time  of  unexpected  but  con- 
spicuous labor  in  a  new  field  also.  As  soon  as  his 
purpose  to  resign  the  pastoral  office  became  known, 
the  corporation  of  Yale  sought  his  services  for  the 
vacant  theological  chair  in  the  Divinity  School ;  and 

*G.  L.  Walker,  Memorial  Sermon,  ibid.,  p.  184. 


LEONARD   BACON  453 

as  a  consequence  of  this  invitation  he  taught  as  Act- 
ing Professor  of  Revealed  Theology  in  Yale  Seminary 
from  1866  to  1871,  when  he  became  Lecturer  on 
Church  Polity  and  American  Church  History,  a  post 
that  he  occupied  as  long  as  he  lived.  He  threw  him- 
self into  the  new  work  with  characteristic  energy,  and 
it  was  during  the  period  of  his  professorship  that  the 
present  buildings  occupied  by  the  Divinity  School 
were  erected — a  material  gain  for  the  school  of  his 
service  in  which  his  wride  acquaintance  and  influence 
made  him  conspicuously  helpful. 

So  he  passed  onward  to  the  close  of  his  useful  life, 
beloved  and  reverenced  by  the  community  in  which 
he  had  labored,  and  honored  by  the  churches  of  which 
he  had  been  so  long  a  leader.  His  old  age  was  a 
peaceful  and  fruitful  autumn,  and  he  went  from  among 
men  on  December  24,  1881,  without  having  been 
seriously  laid  aside  from  active  life  till  the  summons 
came. 

At  his  funeral,  just  before  his  six  sons  bore  his 
body  from  the  church  where  he  had  ministered  for 
fifty-six  years,  the  mourning  congregation  sang  his 
serene  hymn  —  a  hymn  no  less  appropriate  in  its  sug- 
gestion of  the  character  of  Dr.  Bacon's  ripening  years 
than  expressive  of  his  Christian  hope : 

"  Hail,  tranquil  hour  of  closing  day  ! 

Begone,  disturbing  care  ! 
And  look,  my  soul,  from  earth  away, 
To  him  who  heareth  prayer. 


454  LEONARD  BACON 

"  How  sweet  the  tear  of  penitence, 

Before  his  throne  of  grace, 
While  to  the  contrite  spirit's  sense, 
He  shows  his  smiling  face. 

"  How  sweet,  through  long- remembered  years, 

His  mercies  to  recall  ; 

And,  pressed  with  wants,  and  griefs,  and  fears, 
To  trust  his  love  for  all. 

"  How  sweet  to  look,  in  thoughtful  hope, 

Beyond  this  fading  sky, 
And  hear  him  call  his  children  up 
To  his  fair  home  on  high. 

*'  Calmly  the  day  forsakes  our  heaven 

To  dawn  beyond  the  west  ; 
So  let  my  soul,  in  life's  last  even, 
Retire  to  glorious  rest." 


We  have  followed  the  lives  of  ten  eminent  Congre- 
gationalists  as  we  have  met  together  for  these  succes- 
sive hours.  The  biographies  have  been  those  of  men 
diverse  indeed  in  the  circumstances  of  their  history,  in 
the  times  in  which  their  work  was  done,  in  the  interests 
that  were  the  uppermost  topics  of  discussion  among 
those  with  whom  their  lot  was  cast,  in  their  methods 
of  Christian  activity,  in  their  own  interpretations  of 
aspects  of  Christian  truth.  From  the  exile  for  his  faith, 
leading  a  pioneer  community  in  its  efforts  to  strike 
root  in  the  somber  forest  wilderness,  to  the  opponent 
of  slavery,  preaching  for  more  than  half  a  century  from 
an  historic  pulpit,  and  spending  his  last  days  as  a  theo- 


LEONARD  BACON  455 

logical  instructor  in  a  venerable  university,  is  indeed  a 
far  cry,  if  the  flight  of  time  and  alteration  of  external 
circumstances  alone  are  considered.  But  a  unity 
greater  than  any  seeming  diversity  characterized  these 
men.  To  them  all  God  was  the  verjestpljxalitiea;  to 


them  all  his  service  was  the  highest  earthly  privilege ; 
to  them  all  his  Word  was  the  sufficient  guide  of  life. 
No  one  of  them  but  walked  close  with  God.  No  one 
of  them  but  lived  "  as  seeing  the  invisible."  And 
they  were  one,  also,  in  their  thought  of  the  Church  as 
finding  its  highest  and  truest  expression,  not  in  a  priest- 
hood divinely  appointed  to  dispense  sacraments  neces- 
sary for  salvation  to  a  laity  divinely  committed  to  its 
control,  but  in  self-governing  and  mutually  responsible 
fellowships  of  Christian  men  and  women,  knit  by  a 
common  covenant  to  one  another  and  to  the  living 
Lord  whose  name  they  bear,  and  enjoying  an  Apos- 
tolic freedom  in  His  worship  and  service.  They  were 
every  one  of  them  in  the  truest  sense  ministers  in  the 
household  of  God. 

One  they  were,  too,  in  their  conception  of  the 
Christian  life  as  one  of  consecration,  drawing  its 
strength  from  the  divine  Spirit  to  whom  it  owes  its 
birth,  and  manifesting  in  its  fruits  the  presence  of  the 
transforming  power  of  God.  It  is  an  honorable  suc- 
cession. Not  one  of  them  but  made  New  England 
stronger,  better,  freer,  by  reason  of  his  work. 


INDEX. 


Abbot,  Samuel,  381,  383. 

Abrams,  Margaret,  98. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  cited,  29, 

30,  75,  80,  81. 
Ainsworth,  Henry,  the  Separatist, 

22,   I2O,   121. 

Albany  Convention,  The,  429-432, 
448. 

Allen,  Prof.  A.  V.  G.,  cited,  220, 
228,  259. 

Allerton,  Isaac,  25. 

Allin,  Rev.  John,   158. 

American  Bible  Society,  The,  428. 

American  Board,  The,  388,  389, 
394,  428. 

American  Congregational  Union 
The,  431. 

American  Temperance  Society, 
The,  389. 

American  Tract  Society,  The,  389, 
428. 

Amsterdam,  The  Separatists  in, 
21,  22,  45. 

Andover  Theological  Seminary, 
why  founded,  376-379  ;  circum- 
stances of  foundation,  379—385  ; 
Woods's  services  to,  381-386 ; 
early  growth,  385,  386  ;  interest 
in  missions,  387-389  ;  Bacon  at, 
414,  424  ;  mentioned,  389,  390, 
394,  396,  402-405,  416. 

Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  196. 

Anglican  Party,  its  aims,  51,  52. 

Antinomianism,  Controversy  re- 
garding, 75—81. 

Apthorpe,  Rev.  East,  293. 


Arber,  Prof.  Edward,  cited,  15,18, 

21,  22,  31,  39. 

Arianism,     in     eighteenth-century 

New    England,    293,     297-299, 

308-310,  326,  348,  361. 
Armada,  The  Spanish,  6,  12. 
Armine,  Lady,  159. 
Arminianism,    51,    231,   233,   252, 

254,  268,  297,  298,  344,  361. 
Aspinwall,  Edwin,  102. 
Atonement,  Doctrine  of  the,  305, 

306,  372,  438. 

Auburn  Theological  Seminary,  386. 
Austerfield,  Bradford's  early  home 

at,  6-20,  49,  55. 
Awakening,  The  Great,  237,  240, 

246,  270,  275-287. 


B 


Babwofth,  15,  20. 

Backus,    Rev.    Dr.    Charles,    370, 

37i,  379- 

Backus,  Rev.  Isaac,  cited,  211. 
Bacon,  Rev.  David,  410-413. 
Bacon,  Francis,  7. 
Bacon,  Dr.  Leonard,  of  Hartford, 

413. 

Bacon,  Rev.  Dr.  Leonard,  early 
life,  410-413  ;  education,  413, 
414  ;  ordination,  414;  settlement 
at  New  Haven,  415,  416  ;  early 
pastorate,  416-418  ;  household 
experiences,  418,  419 ;  in  the 
Orient,  419  ;  as  a  religious  lead- 
er, 419,  420  ;  literary  gifts,  420  ; 
poetic  strain,  421  ;  services  as  a 
historian,  421-426  ;  his  Thirteen 


457 


458 


INDEX 


Bacon —  Contin  tied. 

Discourses,  424 ;  doctorate  of 
divinity,  424  ;  his  Andover  Dis- 
course, 424  ;  his  Historical  Dis- 
course, 424  ;  his  Genesis  of  the 
New  England  Churches,  426  ; 
services  to  Congregational  polity, 
426-428;  his  Manuat&nd  Digest, 
426,  427  ;  the  "  Boston  Plat- 
form," 427,  428,  432  ;  services 
to  missionary  societies,  etc., 
428-432  ;  at  the  Albany  Con- 
vention, 429  ;  in  theologic  con- 
troversies, 432-440  ;  the  Taylor 
and  Tyler  division,  435-437  ; 
the  Bushnell  controversy,  437- 
440  ;  his  editorial  services,  441- 
443,  449  ;  the  New  Englander, 
442  ;  the  Independent,  443,  449  ; 
temperance  reform,  443-445  ; 
anti-slavery  efforts,  445-451  ; 
President  Lincoln's  opinion, 
450,  451  ;  retirement  from 
the  pastorate,  451,  452  ; 
services  to  Yale,  452,  453  ;  his 
last  days,  453,  454. 

Bacon,    Rev.     Dr.     Leonard   W., 
cited,  412,  445,  446,  451. 

Bacon,  Oliver  N.,  cited,  169. 

Baillie,    Prof.  Robert,  81,  88,  93. 

Ball,  Rev.  John,  87. 

Bancroft,  Archbishop  Richard,  51. 

Bangor  Theological  Seminary,  386. 

Barlow,  Bishop  William,  59. 

Barnes,  Rev.  Dr.  Albert,  435. 

Baron,  Dr.  Peter,  62. 

Bartlett,  William,  381. 

Baxter,    Rev.    Richard,   164,  202, 
422,  448. 

Bay   Psalm   Book,  The,   120-122, 
148. 

Bayly,  Bishop  Lewis,  164. 

Bawtry,  6,  8,  10. 

Bellamy,    Rev.    Dr.   Joseph,  238, 
249,  258,  280,  314,  323,  335,  341, 

349.  379- 
Benevolence,    Disinterested,  255- 

257,  330,  33i,  345-347,  399, 
400  ;  see  also  Willingness  to  be 
Damned. 


Berkeley,  Bishop  George,  220. 

Bernard,  Rev.  Richard,  117. 

Bernhard,  Saint,  240. 

Bible,  English  translation  of  the, 
9,  13- 

Blyth,  Monastery  of,  8,  TO. 

Boston,  England,  Bradford's  im- 
prisonment at,  21 ;  Cotton's  work 
at,  59-68. 

Boston,  Mass.,  settled,  53  ;  Cot- 
ton settled  in,  69  ;  the  Anti- 
nomian  controversy  in,  75-81  ; 
Roger  Williams  declines  settle- 
ment in,  83  ;  Eliot  invited  to, 
142;  Increase  Mather  settled  at, 
183  ;  the  "  Thursday  Lecture," 
187,  275  ;  great  fires  in,  190  ; 
Liberal  movement  in,  203-207  ; 
first  half  of  eighteenth  century, 
273-275  ;  Whitefield's  charac- 
terization of,  275  ;  the  Revolu- 
tionary War,  296,  297  ;  early 
Unitarianism  in,  299,  377,  378. 

Boston,  churches  of,  —  First 
Church,  Cotton  settled,  69 ; 
divided,  132  ;  Chauncy's  settle- 
ment, 270  ;  Foxcrof t's  pastorate, 
270;  Whitefield's  preaching, 2 77: 
— Second  Church,  183,  194,  195: 
— Old  South  Church,  133,  207, 
278,  342,  348,  364  : —  Brattle 
Church,  203  -  207  :  —  King's 
Chapel,  377:  —  New  North 
Church,  279 :— West  Church, 
293,  333:— Park  Street  Church, 
396. 

Boston  Platform,  The,  428,  432. 

Bourne,  Rev.  Richard,  165. 

Bowen,  Henry  C.,  449. 

Bradford,  Alden,  cited,  291-293. 

Bradford,    Rev.    Dr.   Amory    H., 

Bradford,  John,  38. 

Bradford,  Gov.  William,  early  life, 
6-1 1,  54  ;  religious  training, 
15-18  ;  reasons  for  leaving  Eng- 
and,  19,  20,  50  ;  goes  to  Hol- 
land, 20,  21  ;  learns  a  trade,  21, 
22  ;  marriage,  22  ;  at  Leyden, 
21-24  I  emigration  to  America, 


INDEX 


459 


Bradford —  Continued. 

23-25  ;  governor,  25,  26  ;  second 
marriage,  27  ;  services  to  colony 
in  peril  of  famine,  26-29  I  ^n 
peril  from  hostile  countrymen, 
29-32  ;  secures  financial  free- 
dom for  Plymouth,  32-35  ;  wel- 
comes Salem  church,  35-37  ;  his 
History,  37-39  ;  his  minor  writ- 
ings, 39,  40  ;  his  style,  40  ;  his 
character,  41,  42  ;  last  days,  42- 
44  ,  his  faith,  45  ;  on  luxury, 
147  ;  mentioned,  5,  56. 

Bradford,  Deputy-Gov.  William, 
38. 

Bradley,  Rev.  Joshua,  356. 

Brainerd,  Rev.  David,  242,  243, 
3i8,  319- 

Branford,  Indian  missions  at,  166. 

Brattle  Church,  see  Boston 
churches. 

Brattle,  Thomas,  205,  206. 

Brattle,  Rev.  William,  tutor  at 
Harvard,  195,  202  ;  in  liberal 
movement,  204-207  ;  pastor  at 
Cambridge,  205,  206. 

Brewster,  Ruling  Elder  William, 
at  Scrooby,  15-18,  49  ;  at  Ley- 
den,  23,  25  ;  at  Plymouth,  42, 

44- 

Briant,  Rev.  Lemuel,  298,  299. 
Bridge,  Rev.  William,  91. 
Brown,   Rev.   Dr.    John,   of  Bed- 
ford, cited,  15. 
Brown,  Rev.  John,  of  Cohassett, 

299. 
Brown,  John,  of   Harper's  Ferry 

fame,  412. 
Brown,  Moses,  381. 
Browne,    Robert,   the   Separatist, 

14,  82. 

Buell,  Rev.  Samuel,  318,  321. 
Builli,  John  de,  8. 
Burial     Hill     Declaration,    The, 

194. 

Burr,  Pres.  Aaron,  260,  261. 
Burr,  Rev.  Jonathan,  112,  113. 
Burroughs,  Rev.  Jeremiah,  91. 
Bushnell,  Rev.  Dr.   Horace,  314, 

437-440 


Calef,  Robert,  202. 

Calhoun,  Rev.  George  A.,  436. 

Callender,  Rev.  Elisha,  21 1. 

Calvin,  John,  Cotton's  love  for, 
72  ;  mentioned,  223. 

Calvinism,  "  Consistent,"  361. 

Calvinism, "Old"  or  "  Moderate," 
331,  332,  339,  34i,  344,  345, 
361-363,  375-377,  379-385,  405, 
434- 

Calvinism,  Stages  of,  229-231. 

Cambridge  Platform,  The,  91,  93, 
124-126,  427. 

Cambridge  Synod,  see  Synod. 

Cambridge  University,  student 
life  in,  55,  56  ;  colleges  of,  — 
Emmanuel,  56,  57,  139,  140  ; 
Jesus,  139  ;  Peter  House,  58 ; 
St.  John's,  58  ;  Trinity,  8,  55, 
56,  268. 

Canonicus,  Indian  chief,  29. 

Canterbury,  Archbishop  of 
(Thomas  Seeker),  293. 

Carey,  Rev.  William,  the  mis- 
sionary, 138,  163,  387. 

Carpenter,  Alice,  27. 

Cartwright,  Thomas,  Puritan  lead- 
er, 13. 

Carver,  Gov.  John,  25. 

Chaderton,  Laurence,  Puritan 
leader,  57. 

Chadwick,  Rev.  Dr.  J.  W.,   cited, 

397- 
Chamberlain,    Dr.    Mellen,    cited, 

292. 

Chandler,  Rev.  Dr.  T.  B.,  294. 
Chandler,  William,  145. 
Channing,   Rev.  Dr.  W.  E.,  314, 

325-327,  377,  397,  398. 
Charles   I.,    of  England,    52,  53, 

159- 

Chauncy,  Pres.  Charles,  131,  178 
268,  269. 

Chauncy,   Charles,  merchant,  269. 

Chauncy,  Rev.  Dr.  Charles,  an- 
cestry and  early  life,  268,  269  ; 
settlement  at  Boston,  270  ;  ser- 
mon on  Foxcroft,  271 ;  his 


460 


INDEX 


Chauncy —  Continued. 

personal  traits,  269-273,  287 ; 
opposes  the  Whitefieldian  re- 
vival, 282-288  ;  his  course  criti- 
cised, 283  ;  on  conversion,  283, 
3°3.  3°4 1  his  Seasonable 
Thoughts,  286  ;  health  affected, 
287  ;  doctorate  received,  288  ; 
opposes  legislature,  288,  289 ; 
controversy  regarding  Episco- 
pacy, 289-297  ;  reply  to  the 
Bishop  of  Landaff,  293,  294  ; 
Answer  to  Chandler,  294  ;  his 
View  of  Episcopacy,  295  ;  his 
patriotism,  296  ;  his  "  Liberal  " 
theology,  297-310  ;  his  modera- 
tion, 299  ;  on  Original  Sin,  258, 

301,  302  ;  his    Twelve  Sermons, 
301-304  ;  views  on  Saving  Faith, 

302,  303,    309,    332,    333  ;    his 
Benevolence  of  the  Deity,   304  ; 
view    of    the   Atonement,    305, 
306  ;    his  Salvation  of  All  Men, 
306-308  ;  his  Arianism,  308-310  ; 
unfavorable  opinion  of  Hopkins, 
341  ;  his  death,  310  ;  mentioned, 
314,  326,  377. 

Chauncy,  Rev.  Isaac,  269. 
Christian  Spectator,  The,  441,  446. 
Church  Building  Society,  The,  431. 
Church,  Rev.  John  H.,  369,  370. 
Chutchamaquin,  Indian  chief,  155. 
Clark,  Rev.  Peter,  301. 
Clark,  Prof.  William,  cited,  10. 
Clarke,    Rev.    John,    326 ;     cited, 

269,  272. 
Clarke,     Rev.    Dr.    Samuel,    298, 

300. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  295. 
Clement  of  Rome,  295. 
Clyfton,  Rev.  Richard,  Separatist, 

15,  18,  19,  49. 
Coddington,  William,  66. 
Codman,  Rev.  Dr.  John,  396. 
Cole,  Nathan,  quoted,  276. 
College    and    Education    Society, 

The,  428,  429. 

Collins,  Anthony,  the  Deist,  254. 
Colman,  Rev.  Benjamin,  205,  206, 

281. 


Columba,  Saint,  138. 

Confession,  The  Savoy,  193  ;  —  of 
1680,  193,  194;  — The  Westmin- 
ster, 193. 

Congregational  Home  Missionary 
Society,  The,  428. 

Connecticut  Evangelical  Magazine, 
The,  387. 

Conversion,  a  difficult  process,  102, 
181,  318,  319,  369 ;  under  de- 
clining Calvinism,  229-232  ;  In- 
crease Mather's  view  of,  189  ; 
Edwards's  experience  and  theory 
of,  222-225,  233-235 ;  Chaun- 
cy's  view  of,  283,  303,  304  ; 
Hopkins's  view  of,  317-322, 
333-338. 

Cooper,  Thompson,  cited,  18. 

Corbitant,  Indian  chief,  29. 

Cortes,  Hernando,  412. 

Cotton,  Rev.  John,  parentage,  54  ; 
education,  55,  56;  religious 
awakening,  57-59  ;  settlement  at 
Boston,  Eng.,  59;  marriages, 
59,  60  ;  his  activity,  60-63,  IO5  '< 
his  defense  of  Calvinism,  62  ;  his 
nonconformity,  63-65  ;  conse- 
quent difficulties  and  flight,  66- 
68  ;  letter  to  his  wife,  67  ;  his 
child's  baptism,  68,  69  ;  settles 
at  Boston,  Mass.,  69,  70;  ap- 
pearance and  preaching,  70-72  ; 
habits  and  influence,  72-75  ; 
opinion  of  Democracy,  74 ;  his 
draft  of  laws,  75  ;  in  the  Anti- 
nomian  controversy,  75-81 ;  his 
controversy  with  Roger  Wil- 
liams, 8 1— 86;  views  on  persecu- 
tion, 85,  86  ;  his  answer  to  Ball, 
87 ;  his  Catechism,  87 ;  on 
church-music,  87,  88  ;  on  infant 
baptism,  88  ;  on  church  mem- 
bership, 88 ;  his  treatises  on 
Congregationalism,  89-93,  115  ; 
the  H'ay,  90  ;  the  Keyes,  90— 
92 ;  the  Way  Cleared,  93  ; 
invited  to  the  Westminster  As- 
sembly, 91  ;  the  Cambridge 
Platform,  93,  124,  170;  moder- 
ator in  1643,  119  ;  possible  letter 


INDEX 


461 


Cotton — Continued. 

to  Richard  Mather,  108  ;  death 
and  character,  94 ;  mentioned, 
107,  109,  115,  117-119,  134, 
142,  151,  166,  175,  180,  225. 

Cotton,    Rev.    John,    Jr.,   of  Ply- 
mouth, 165,  166. 

Cotton,   Rev.  John,  of  Hampton, 
184. 

Cotton,  Roland,  54. 

Cotton,  Rev.  Seaborn,  68. 

Covenant,     The     Half-Way,     see 
Half-Way  Covenant. 

Crafts,  Rev.  Thomas,  365. 

Crocker,  Rev.  Zebulon,  cited,  401. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  182. 

Cromwell,  Richard,  182. 

Cushman,  Robert,  25. 

Cutler,  Rector  Timothy,  226. 


D 


Danforth,  Rev.  Samuel,  143. 

Danforth,  Rev.  Samuel,  Jr.,  166, 
168. 

Davenport,  Rev.  Addington,    289. 

Davenport,  Rev.  James,  281,  285. 

Davenport,  Rev.  John,  conceals 
Cotton,  67  ;  settlement  at  New 
Haven,  79  ;  at  Boston,  132,  133  ; 
death,  170  ;  mentioned,  91,  107. 

Derby,  54. 

Dexter,  Prof.  Franklin  B.,  228  ; 
cited,  220,  222,  226,  249,  260, 
322. 

Dexter,  Rev.  Dr.  Henry  M.,  3, 
39  ;  quoted,  55  ;  cited,  17,  22,  23, 
38,  92,  130,  151,  162. 

Disinterested  Benevolence,  see 
Benevolence. 

Doddridge,  Rev.  Dr.  Philip,  252, 
298,  369. 

Dorchester,  settled,  53 ;  origin  of 
its  churches,  109,  no  ;  Richard 
Mather  settled  at,  110-112  ;  In- 
crease Mather  born  at,  176 ; 
attitude  toward  Half-Way  Cove- 
nant, 131-134;  Eliot's  mission- 
ary efforts  in,  155. 


Dorset,  The  earl  of,  66. 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  7. 
Druillettes,  Gabriel,  41,  148. 
Dudley,  Gov.  Joseph,   196,  208. 
Dudley,  Justice    Paul,  292. 
Dudley,     Gov.    Thomas.     53,    66, 

112. 

Dummer,  Jeremiah,   222. 
Dunster,  Pres.  Henry,  154,  178. 
Dwight,  Rev.  Dr.  Sereno  E.,  cited, 

219-223,     226,    228,    239,    244, 

246-252,     254,    255,    261,    262, 

278,   280. 
Dwight,  Pres.  Timothy,  362,  367, 

368,  386,  399. 


Echard,  Laurence,  cited,   58. 

Education  Society,  The  (Congre- 
gational), 389. 

Edwardeanism,  361-363,  370,  372, 
377,  385,  391-  399-402,  434,  437 
(see  also  Edwards  and  Hopkins). 

Edwards,  Esther,  Mrs.  Burr,   260. 

Edwards,  Jerusha,  243. 

Edwards,  Pres.  Jonathan,  home 
and  early  life,  217-219,  269 ; 
precocity,  219,  220  ;  student  at 
Yale,  220-222  ;  conversion,  222- 
224  ;  ministry  at  New  York, 
226  ;  call  to  Bolton,  226  ;  his 
Resolutions,  226 ;  a  tutor  at 
Yale,  226  ;  settled  at  Northamp- 
ton, 227  ;  marriage,  227,  228  ; 
characteristics,  143.  228.  ^47^ 
248,  262  ;  a  slaveholder,  349  ; 
quality  of  his  ministry,  229,  £32  ; 
his  great  work,  232  ;  hispreach- 
Tfig,  "*232,  235,  236  ;  physical 
demonstrations  under  it,  280 ; 
majority  of  mankind  to  be  lost, 
307;  the  revival  at  Northampton, 
232-237;  the  Narrative  of  Sur- 
prising Conversions,  236  ;  meets 
Whitefield,  237  ;  protests  against 
certain  traits  of  Whitefield,  278- 
280  ;  criticises  Chauncy,  283  ; 
his  Thoughts,  238,  286 ;  Mrs. 
Edwards's  religious  experiences, 


462 


INDEX 


Edwards — Continued. 

238-240  ;  his  opinion  on  ' '  Wil- 
lingness to  be  Damned,"  239, 
347  ;  his  Religious  Affections, 
240-242  ;  the  Life  of  Brainerd, 
242,  243  ;  efforts  for  union  in 
prayer,  243,  244 ;  his  difficulties 
at  Northampton,  244  ;  his  change 
of  view  on  terms  of  communion, 
244-246  ;  the  Humble  Inquiry, 
247  ;  dismissed  from  Northamp- 
ton, 248  ;  Hopkins's  studies  un- 
der and  friendship  for  him,  320 
-324  ;  called  to  Stockbridge, 
249,  323  ;  missionary  labors  and 
scholastic  studies,  250  ;  his  writ- 
ings, 251  ;  the  Freedom  of  Will, 
251-254,  304 ;  the  End  for 
which  God  Created  the  World, 
251,  254  ;  treatise  on  True  Vir- 
tue, 251,  255,  257,  344,  400; 
volume  on  Original  Sin,  251, 
•257-259  ;  his  influence,  259-263; 
removal  to  Princeton  and  death, 
261  ;  mentioned,  267,  268,  282, 
284,  297,  298,  302,  329,  331, 
335,  345,  352,  354,  379,  385. 

Edwards,  Mrs.  Jonathan,  see 
Sarah  Pierpont. 

Edwards,  Rev.  Dr.  Jonathan,  Jr., 
225,  252,  254,  256,  306,  307. 

Edwards,  Richard,  218. 

Edwards,  Rev.  Timothy,  218, 
219, 

Edwards,  William,  218. 

Eliot,  Bennett,   138,  139. 

Eliot,    Dr.   Ellsworth,  cited,    138, 

139- 

Eliot,  Rev.  John,  his  title  of 
"Apostle,"  138  ;  early  life,  138  ; 
education,  139  ;  assists  Thomas 
Hooker,  139-141  ;  conversion, 
141  ;  settles  at  Roxbury,  142  ; 
marriage,  142,  143  ;  pastoral 
labors,  143-145  ;  personal  char- 
acteristics, 145-148  ;  the  Bay 
Psalm  Book,  121,  148 ;  his 
Christian  Commonwealth,  148- 
150;  his  Communion  of  Churches, 
150,  151 ;  his  missionary  labors, 


151-171  ;  preaches  to  Waauban, 
155-158  ;  education  for  the  In- 
dians, 158,  160,  161  ;  founds 
Natick,  161  ;  his  translations, 
162-164  ;  results  of  his  work, 
166-170  ;  his  last  days,  170, 
171  ;  mentioned,  175,  250. 

Elizabeth,  of  England,  7,  10,  12, 
13,  50,  56,  107. 

Ellis,  A.  B.,  cited,  56,  60,  269-272. 

Emerson,  Rev.  William,  cited, 
269-272,  299. 

Emlyn,  Rev.  Thomas,  298. 

Emmons,  Rev.  Dr.  Nathaniel, 
143,  314,  335,  374,  376,  379, 
385. 

Endicott,  Gov.  John,  36,  53,  106. 

Episcopacy,  controversy  over,  289- 
297. 

Erskine,  Rev.  Dr.  John,  248-250. 


Farrar,  Samuel,  381. 

Felt,  Rev.  Joseph  B.,  cited,  288. 

Finney,     Pres.    Charles    G.,    146, 

402. 
Fisher,    Prof.     George    P.,    cited, 

220,  258. 

Fiske,  John,  cited,  167. 
Flavel,  Rev.  John,  72,  200,  281. 
Fletcher,    Rev.    Henry,    curate  at 

Austerfield,  n,  16. 
Foster,  Rev.  Isaac,  146. 
Foster,  Capt.  William,  146. 
Fowler,    Prof.   W.    C.,  cited,  268, 

269. 
Foxcroft,  Rev.  Thomas,  270,  271, 

277. 

Francis,  Saint,  240. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  367. 
Freeman,  Rev.  James,  377. 
French,  Rev.  Jonathan,  380. 
Froude,  James  Anthony,  cited,  9, 

10. 
Fuller,   Deacon    Samuel,    25,    36, 

37- 

G 

Gainsborough,   Separatist   congre- 
gation at,  18-20. 


INDEX 


463 


Gardiner,  Prof.  II.  Norman,  cited, 

220. 

Gardner,  Newport,  356. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  446,  447. 

Gay,  Rev.  Ebenezer,  299. 

George  I.,  of  England,  209. 

Gill,  Lieut. -Gov.  Moses,  364. 

Gillespie,  Rev.  Thomas,  248. 

Glas,  John,  302. 

Goodwin,  J.  A.,  cited,  25,  27,  32, 
40,  42,  43. 

Goodwin,  Rev.  Thomas,  91. 

Gookin,  Daniel,  154,  166,  168. 

Gott,  Charles,  cited,  36. 

Graham,  Rev.  John,  280,  317. 

"Great  Awakening,"  The,  see 
Awakening. 

Great  Barrington,  Hopkins's  pas- 
torate at,  322-324,  329,  338,  339. 

Grosart,   Rev.  Alexander  B.,  250. 

Guyse,  Rev.  Dr.  John,  236. 


H 


Half-Way  Covenant,  The,  126- 
134,  184,  244-247,  249,  329,  374. 

Hall,  Rev.  Gordon,  137,  388,  389. 

Hall,  John,  of  Roxbury,  85. 

Hamilton  College,  424. 

Hamilton  Theological  Seminary, 
387. 

Hankridge,  Sarah,  wife  of  John 
Cotton,  60,  67,  69  ;  of  Richard 
Mather,  60. 

Harrison,  Rev.  John,  102. 

Hart,  Rev.  William,  341,  344,  361. 

Hartford,  mentioned,  no,  277,  410, 
411,  413,  416,  418,  424. 

Hartford  Theological  Seminary, 
386,  400,  436. 

Harvard,  Rev.  John,  57,  178. 

Harvard  University,  early  condi- 
tions of  entrance,  101;  Chauncy's 
presidency,  268,  269;  in  Increase 
Mather's  student  days,  177-179  ; 
Mather's  presidency,  194,  195, 
203,  207,  208  ;  gives  Mather  a 
doctorate,  202 ;  efforts  for  a 
charter,  202,  203  ;  the  Hollis 
professorship,  367,  370,  371, 


378,  380  ;  the  Dudleian  lecture- 
ship, 292,  293 ;  Whitefield's 
criticism,  279  ;  in  Woods's  time, 
365-368,  370,  373  ;  passes  to 
anti-Trinitarians,  378  ;  men- 
tioned, 269,  452. 

Hawes,  Rev.  Dr.  Joel,  416. 

Hawksley,  John,  cited,  225. 

Hawley,  Joseph,  248,  252. 

Haynes,  Gov.  John,  68,  74,  82. 

Heads  of  Agreement,  The,  200. 

Hemmenway,  Rev.  Moses,  340, 
345,  36i. 

Henry  VIII.,  of  England,  8,  9. 

Herle,  Rev.  Charles,  119. 

Hiacoomes,  Indian  chief,  165. 

Higginson,  Rev.  Francis,  36,  53. 

Hill,  H.  K.,  cited,  133. 

Hillhouse,  Senator  James,  417. 

Hobart,  Rev.  L.  Smith,  430. 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  the  philosopher, 
253. 

Hollis,  Thomas,  195,  212. 

Hollis,  Thomas,  the  younger,  292. 

Holt,  Katherine,  marries  Richard 
Mather,  105,  106. 

Hooker,  Rev.  Thomas,  at  Em- 
manuel College,  57  ;  English 
ministry,  139-141  ;  Eliot  influ- 
enced by,  139,  141;  as  a  preach- 
er, 71  ;  flight  from  England,  67, 
68;  founder  of  Hartford,  74,  no; 
advice  to  Mather,  108,  109 ; 
moderator  in  1643,  119;  death, 
170  ;  services  to  Congregational- 
ism, 86 ;  on  conversion,  181, 
225,  234  ;  on  "  Willingness  to  be 
Damned,"  347  ;  mentioned,  91, 
94,  105,  107,  134,  151,  227. 

Hooper,  Bishop  John,  10. 

Hopkinsianism,  362-365,  369,  370, 
3747377,  381-385,  399,  405. 

Hopkins,  John,  Version  of  the 
Psalms,  1 20. 

Hopkins,  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel,  signif- 
icance as  a  theologian,  314,  315, 
352-355,  361;  his  autobiography, 
315  ;  early  life,  316  ;  a  student 
at  Yale,  317  ;  his  religious  ex- 
perience, 317-322  ;  discipleship 


464 


INDEX 


Hopkins — Continued. 

and  friendship  toward  Edwards, 
249,  320-324 ;  called  to  Sims- 
bury,  322  ;  settled  at  Great  Bar- 
rington,  322,  323  ;  marriages, 
323,  328,  329 ;  personal  traits, 
324—329  ;  confidence  in  his  doc- 
trines, 327,  328  ;  trials  at  Great 
Barrington,  329,  330;  treatise  on 
Sin,  330,  331  ;  controversy  over 
"  unregenerate  doings,"  333- 
338  ;  his  Enquiry,  333  ;  his  7 "wo 
Discourses,  335  ;  views  on  divine 
sovereignty,  337,  338;  dismission 
from  Great  Barrington,  338,  339; 
criticism  of  Chauncy,  341  ;  on 
Arianism  in  Boston,  299  ;  his 
reply  to  Mills,  340;  attacked  by 
Hart,  341,  342  ;  his  settlement 
at  Newport,  342-344  ;  his  reply 
to  Hart,  344  ;  his  Trtte  Holiness 
345 ;  view  of  the  nature  of  virtue, 
345,  400  ;  his  Dialogue,  346  ; 
view  on  "  Willingness  to  be 
Damned,"  346,  347,  370,  371  ; 
his  hopefulness,  347  ;  confident 
of  infant  salvation,  348  ;  defends 
divinity  of  Christ,  299,  348 ; 
views  on  future  punishment, 
348,  349 ;  expectation  of  a  mil- 
lennium, 349 ;  opposition  to 
slavery,  256,  349-351  ;  his  doc- 
torate, 352 ;  his  System,  328, 
338,  351,  352,  355,  371  I  his  in- 
fluence, 353-355.  362  ;  old  age 
and  death,  355-357;  mentioned, 
372  ;  his  writings  cited  elsewhere 
than  in  the  lecture  on  him,  222, 
223,  228,  247,  250,  262,  362. 

Horrocks,  Elizabeth,  marries  John 
Cotton,  59,  60. 

Hort,  Rev.  F.  J.  A.,  cited,  57. 

Hough,  Atherton,  68. 

Howard,   Rev.  Dr.  Bezaleel,   272, 
273,  287. 

Howe,  Rev.  John,  182,  200. 

Hubbard,  Rev.  William,   the  his- 
torian, 38,  75. 

Hunter,  Rev.  Joseph,  cited,  9,  II. 

Hutchinson,  Mrs.  Anne,  75,  81. 


Hutchinson,     Gov.     Thomas,    38, 
197;  cited,  75,  291. 


Immersion  of  Infants,  268. 
Independent,  The,  443,  449. 
Ingersoll,  Joanna,  wife  of  Samuel 
Hopkins,  323,  328. 


J 


James  I.,  of  England,  50,  52,  57, 

106. 

James  II.,  of  England,  196,  197. 
Jefferson,  President  Thomas,  367. 
Johnson,  "  Mr.,"  Cotton's  teacher, 

55- 

Johnson,  Isaac,  53. 
Johnson,     Lucy,     Mrs.     Leonard 

Bacon,  418. 
Judson,  Rev.  Adoniram,  137,  388, 

389- 


Lacy,  John,  the  "prophet,"  286. 

Landaff,  the  Bishop  of  (John 
Ewer),  293. 

Lamb,  Charles,  138. 

Lane  Theological  Seminary,  387. 

Laud,  Archbishop  William,  51,  57, 
63,  67,  106,  107,  140,  141,  268. 

Law,  Rev.  William,  57. 

Lawrence,  Prof.  E.  A.,  cited,  364, 
365,  367-370,  373,  374,  386, 
388-390,  396,  404. 

Leavitt,  Rev.  Dr.  Joshua,  421,449. 

Lebanon,  Conn.,  excitement  at. 
during  the  ' '  Great  Awaken- 
ing," 280. 

Lechford,  Thomas,  cited,  154. 

Lecky,  William  E.  H.,  the  histor- 
ian, quoted,  259. 

L'Ecluse,  Jean  de,  22. 

Leicester  Academy,  365. 

Leverett,  John,  emigrant,  68. 

Leverett,  Pres.  John,  tutor  at  Har- 
vard, 195,  202  ;  in  "Liberal" 
movement,  204-207  ;  president 
of  Harvard,  208. 


INDEX 


465 


Leverett, Ruling  Elder  Thomas, 68, 

69. 
Leyden,  The  Separatists  in,  21-24, 

.45- 
Liberal      Theology      in     eastern 

Massachusetts,     267,     297-310, 

339,    36i,    363,    375,    377,  378, 

38o,  395-398. 
Liberator,  The,  446. 
Lincoln,  President  Abraham,  447, 

450,  45L 

Lincoln,  The  earl  of,  66. 
Lindsey,  Rev.  Theophilus,  310. 
Locke,    John,     the     philosopher, 

220,  253,  254,  258,  300. 
London,  The  Bishop  of  (Edmund 

Gibson),  291. 
Ludlow,  Roger,  53. 
Luther,  Martin,  222. 
Lyford,  Rev.  John,  31,  32,  35. 


M 


Mahan,  Pres.  Asa,  395,  402,  403. 

Malebranche,  Nicolas,  the  philos- 
opher, 220. 

Marshpee,  Indian  mission  at,  165, 
167. 

Martha's  Vineyard,  Indian  mission 
on,  164-169. 

Mary  II.,  of  England,  197. 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  7. 

Massachusetts  Missionary  Maga- 
zine, The,  374,  377,  384,  387. 

Massasoit,  Indian  chief,  29. 

Mather,  Rev.  Dr.  Cotton,  gradu- 
ation from  Harvard,  100  ;  col- 
league pastor  with  his  father, 
194,  195  ;  in  Salem  witchcraft, 
201  ;  desires  the  presidency  of 
Harvard,  208  ;  his  voluminous 
writings,  114,  209,  210  ;  his  wig, 
148  ;  on  the  religious  state  of  Aus- 
terfield,  n  ;  on  Bradford's  busi- 
ness ventures,  22;  his  description 
of  Cotton,  72,  73;  his  description 
of  Eliot,  139,  144,  170,  171  ; 
mentioned,  38  ;  his  Magnalia 
quoted,  55,  114,  144;  cited,  16, 
17,21,22,  25,  42,43,  54,55,  58- 


60,  65,  68,  70,  72,  74,  90,  93,  94, 

98,   104,  105,   112,   121,   141,  143, 

144,  146-148,  161,  162,  165,  170, 
171,  190,  194,  268  ;  his  Paren- 
tator  quoted,  177,  180,  186,  212  ; 
cited,  182,  183,  185,  187,  194, 
199,  202,  209. 

Mather,  Rev.  Eleazer,  131. 

Mather,  Horace  E.,  cited,  98,  99. 

Mather,  Rev.  Df.  Increase,  early 
life,  177  ;  education,  177-182  : 
conversion,  180,  181  ;  in  Ire- 
land, England,  and  Guernsey, 
182  ;  settled  at  Boston,  183  ;  at 
the  Synod  of  1662,  131,  184 ; 
change  of  view  on  Half-Way 
Covenant,  131,  184;  marriages, 
184  ;  early  trials,  185  ;  personal 
traits,  186-188  ;  leader  in  the 
Reforming  Synod,  188-194  ;  his 
Necessity  of  Reformation,  191, 
192  ;  the  "  Confession  of  1680," 
194 ;  president  of  Harvard,  194, 
195  ;  his  son  Cotton  his  col- 
league, 194,  195  ;  successful 
political  mission  to  England, 
196-199 ;  the  Massachusetts 
charter,  198  ;  efforts  to  unite 
English  Congregationalists  and 
Presbyterians,  199,  200  ;  attitude 
toward  Salem  witchcraft,  201, 
202  ;  his  growing  unpopularity, 
202,  203  ;  his  opposition  to  the 
Brattle  Church  movement,  203- 
207  ;  his  Order  of  the  Gospel, 
206,  207  ;  loses  the  Harvard 
presidency,  207,  208 ;  disap- 
pointments, 208,  209  ;  proposed 
mission  to  George  I.,  209;  his 
writings,  114,  209-211 ;  his  grow- 
ing tolerance,  211  ;  his  books 
burned,  281 ;  his  last  days,  212  ; 
his  tomb,  213  ;  mentioned,  115, 
365  ;  his  Life  and  Death  of 
Richard  Mather,  quoted,  98,  104, 
106,  128,  133  ;  cited,  100,  102- 
108  ;  other  works  cited,  90,  171. 

Mather,  Rev.  Moses,  345,  361. 

Mather,  Rev.  Nathanael,  115-117, 
182. 


466 


INDEX 


Mather,  Rev.  Richard,  early  life 
and  education,  98-103  ;  teacher 
at  Toxteth  Park,  101  ;  conver- 
sion, 102  ;  at  Oxford,  103  ;  his 
ministry  at  Toxteth  Park,  103- 
107  ;  his  Puritanism,  104,  107  ; 
his  marriages,  60,  105,  106,  184 ; 
flight  from  England,  107-109  ; 
settlement  at  Dorchester,  109- 
112  ;  spiritual  struggles,  113, 
114  ;  his  services  to  Congrega- 
tionalism, 86,  97,  115-125  ;  his 
Church  Government,  115,  116; 
his  Apologie,  116-118  ;  his  An- 
swer, to  Herle,  119  ;  his  Reply  to 
Rutherford,  119;  the  Bay  Psalm 
Book,  120-122  ;  the  Cambridge 
Synod  and  its  Platform,  123- 
126  ;  opinion  regarding  the  Half- 
Way  Covenant,  126-134 ;  ordi- 
nation of  his  son  Increase,  183  ; 
his  death,  133,  134,  170  ;  men- 
tioned, 176. 

Mather,  Rev.  Samuel,  182. 

Mather,  Thomas,  98. 

Maverick,  Rev.  John,  53,  109. 

May,  Dorothy,  Bradford's  wife,  22, 
27. 

May,  Bishop  John,  22. 

Mayhew,  Rev.  Experience,  332. 

Mayhew,  Rev.  Dr.  Jonathan,  291- 
293,  298,  333,  339. 

Mayhew,  Thomas,  Sr.  and  Jr.,  164, 
165,  168. 

Mayo,  Rev.  John,  183. 

McCulloch,  Rev.  William,  251. 

McNamee,  Theodore,  449. 

Mildmay,  Sir  Walter,  56. 

Mills,  Rev.  Jedidiah,  339,  340, 
361. 

Mills,  Samuel  J.,  Jr.,  137,  387,  388. 

Ministerial  education,  378,  379. 

Missions,  wide  interest  in,  138 ; 
Eliot's  labors,  151-171  ;  legisla- 
tive encouragement,  1 58;  foreign 
missionary  society  formed  in 
England,  159,  160 ;  Indian 
churches,  161,  165,  167,  168 ; 
Eliot's  translations,  162-164;  the 
work  of  the  Mayhews,  164,  165  ; 


results  of  early  Indian  missions, 
166-170  ;  Brainerd's  missionary 
zeal,  243  ;  Edwards's  work  at 
Stockbridge,  250  ;  Hopkins's  ef- 
forts, 350,  351  ;  the  American 
Board  formed,  387-389. 

Mitchell,  Rev.  Jonathan,  181. 

Monthly  Anthology,  The,  375,  377. 

Morse,  Rev.  Dr.  Jedidiah,  374,  375, 
380-382,  396. 

Morton,  Nathaniel,  17,  36,  38,  44. 

Morton,  Thomas,   adventurer,  30. 

Morton,  Bishop  Thomas,  104. 

Mumford,  Hanna,  marries  John 
Eliot,  142. 

N 

Nantucket,  Indian  mission  on,  165, 

167. 
Natick,  Indian  settlement  at,  161, 

167-169. 

Neile,  Archbishop  Richard,  107. 
Newell,  Rev.  Samuel,  137, 388, 389. 
New  Englander,  The,  442. 
New  Haven,  settled,  79  ;  the  First 

Church,  398,  399,  415-418,  423, 

443,  45i,  453- 
New  Haven  Theology,  The,  434- 

436,  451- 

Newman.  Prof.  A.  H.,  cited,  19. 
Newport,   Hopkins's   ministry  at, 

342,  343,  355,  356. 
Newton     Theological     Seminary, 

387. 

New  York,  Edwards  at,  226. 

Norris,  John,  581. 

Northampton,  Edwards's  settle- 
ment at,  227 ;  revival  at,  232- 
237,  280,  321  ;  Whitefield  at, 
237,  277  I  Edwards's  dismission, 
244-249  ;  Hopkins's  life  at,  320- 
322. 

Norton,  Rev.  John,  114,  180,  181. 

Nott,  Rev.  Samuel,  388,  389. 

Nye,  Rev.  Philip,  91. 


Oakes,  Pres.  Urian,  194. 
Oberlin   College,    402,    403,  430, 
432. 


INDEX 


467 


Oberlin  Theological  Seminary, 386. 
Oldham,  John,  32. 


Paine,  Thomas,  367. 

Palfrey,   John   G.,  the   historian, 

cited,  26,  41,  44,   75,    148,    154, 

155,    160,    161,     166-168,    291, 

292. 

Palin,  Rev.  Mr.,  102. 
Panoplist,  The,  375,  377,  384. 
Park,  Prof.  Edwards  A.,  315,  344  ; 

cited,    324-326,    328-330,    335, 

34i,  343,  348-351,  356,  385- 
Parker,  Rev.  Dr.  E.  P.,  cited,  438. 
Parks,  Alice,  marries  David  Bacon, 

410. 

Parris,  Rev.  Samuel,  201. 
Parsons,  Rev.  Jonathan,  238,  280, 

281. 

Partridge,  Rev.  Ralph,  124. 
Patten,    Rev.    Dr.    William,  324, 

348. 

Patteson,  Bishop  John  C.,  138. 
Pearson,  Prof.  Eliphalet,  375,  380- 

383,  385,  386. 

Pemberton,  Rev.  Ebenezer,  205. 
Penn,  William,  412. 
Perkins,    Rev.    William,     Puritan 

leader,  102. 

Perry,  Bishop  W.  S.,  cited,  291. 
Philip's  War,  167,  169,  190. 
Phillips  Academy,  380,  381,  383. 
Phillips,  Rev.  George,  53. 
Phillips,  John,  380. 
Phillips,  John,  Jr.,  381. 
Phillips,  Mrs.  Phoebe,  381. 
Phillips,  Rev.   Samuel,   231,   232, 

332. 

Phillips,  Samuel,  380. 
Phips,  Sir  William,  203. 
Pierce,  William,  68. 
Pierpont,  Rev.  James,  227. 
Pierpont,  Sarah,  marries  Jonathan 

Edwards,  227,  228  ;    character, 

228,  229  ;  spiritual  experiences, 

238-240,     257,   321 ;     welcomes 

Hopkins,  320. 
Pierson,  Rev.  Abraham,  166. 


Plan  of  Union,  The,  429,  430. 

Plymouth,  settled,  24  ;  growth  of, 
26 ;  famine  at,  27,  28 ;  divisions 
in,  30-33 ;  socialistic  experiment 
at,  33-35  I  life  a  struggle,  42  ; 
Ainsworth's  version  of  the 
Psalms  used  at,  121  ;  Indian 
mission  at,  165  ;  Pres.  Chauncy 
at,  268  ;  the  Mayflower  Church 
divided,  377  ;  Burial  Hill  in,  43, 

44- 

Pomeroy,  Rev.  Benjamin,  280. 
Porter,  Prof.  Ebenezer,  414. 
Prayer  Book,  The  English,  9,  64, 

65,  120,  183. 
Presbyterian  Church,   Discussions 

in,  433-435- 
Preston,   Rev.  Dr.  John,   Puritan 

leader,  58. 

Priestley,  Rev.  Joseph,  310,  368. 
Prince,  Rev.  Thomas,  38,  40,  279, 

364. 

Princeton,  Mass.,  Woods's  early 
home,  364,  365,  368,  370,  371. 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary, 
386. 

Princeton  University,  260,261,351. 

Puritans,  The,  their  aims  and  scru- 
ples, 11-13,  50-52,  63-65;  the 
lectureships,  140. 


Quincy,  Edmund,  68. 

Quincy,   Pres.    Josiah,  cited,   178, 

365,  367. 
Quint,  Rev.  Dr.  A.  H.,  427. 


R 


Raine,  Rev.  John,  cited,  8,  10. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  7. 

Randolph,  Edward,  196,  197. 

Rasieres,  Isaac  de,  44. 

Rathband,  Rev.  William,  128. 

Rawson,  Rev.  Grindall,  166,  168. 

Reforming  Synod,  see  Synod. 

Revivals,  under  Stoddard,  232  ; 
under  Edwards  at  Northampton, 
232-237;  the  "Great  Awaken- 


468 


INDEX 


Revivals — Continued. 

ing,"  237,   240,   241,  270,   275- 

287 ;    later   revivals,    355,    370, 

387,  418. 

Reynor,  Rev.  John,  42. 
Rice,  Rev.  Luther,  388,  389. 
Richards,  Rev.  James,  388. 
Robbins,     Rev.     Chandler,    cited, 

180,  183. 
Robinson,  Rev.  John,  the  Pilgrim 

leader,  17-29,  23,  24,  42,  49,  55, 

117. 

Ross,  Rev.  A.  Hastings,   3. 
Russel,  Rev.  Joseph,  368-370. 
Russel,  Rev.  Noadiah,  368. 
Rutherford,  Prof.  Samuel,  88,  90, 

93,  II9- 
Rylands,  J.  P.,  98. 


Salem,  35-3 7,    53,    54,    106,   201, 

381. 

Saltonstall,  Sir  Richard,  53. 
Sancroft,  Archbishop  William,  57. 
Sandeman,  Robert,  302. 
Savage,  James,  cited,  109. 
Savoy  Confession,  see  Confession. 
Saybrook  Platform,  The,  200. 
Saye  and  Sele,  Lord,  74. 
Scrooby,  The  Separatists  at,  15-20, 

45,  49,  56- 

Separatists,  The,  14,  18-20,  49. 

Sewall,  Rev.  Joseph,  281. 

Sewall,  Judge  Samuel,  38,  103, 
104,  197,  350. 

Seward,  William  H.,  449. 

Shakespeare,  William,  7. 

Shepard,  Rev.  Thomas,  of  Cam- 
bridge, at  Emmanuel  College, 
57  ;  on  conversion,  225,  234  ;  on 
"  Willingness  to  be  Damned," 
347  ;  mentioned,  71,  76,  155, 
158,  164. 

Shrewsbury,  The  earl  of,  159. 

Shute,  Rev.  Daniel,  299. 

Sibbes,  Rev.  Richard,  58. 

Sibley,  John  Langdon,  cited,  101, 
113,  165,  166,  179,  184,  195, 
202-205,  209,  269. 


Simpson,  Rev.  Sidrach,  91. 

Skelton,  Rev.  Samuel,  36,  53. 

Slavery,  opposed  by  Jonathan 
Edwards  the  younger,  256;  Hop- 
kins's  efforts  against,  256,  349- 
35 J,  358  ;  declaration  at  Albany 
Convention,  431  ;  Bacon's  oppo- 
sition to,  445-451. 

Smalley,  Rev.  John,  379. 

Smith,  Rev.  Ralph,  42. 

Smith,  Rev.  Samuel,  221. 

Smyth,    Prof.    Egbert,    C.,    cited, 

220. 

Smyth,  John,   the  Separatist,   17- 

19. 
Society  for  Propagating  Christian 

Knowledge  among  the  Indians, 

The,  291. 
Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 

Gospel   in  Foreign  Parts,  The, 

291,  293. 
Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 

Gospel  in  New   England,  The, 

159,  160,  249. 
Some  (Soame),  Rev.  Dr.  Robert, 

58. 

South  Windsor,  217,  218,  226. 
Southworth,  Mrs.  Alice,  27. 
Sparks,  Pres.  Jared,  397. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  7. 
Sprague,    Rev.    Dr.    William    B., 

cited,  269,  272,   287,    296,  355- 

357,  364,  368-371,  373,  374- 
Spring,   Rev.   Dr.  Samuel,  friend- 
ship    for    Woods,     374,     376 ; 

founding  of  Andover  Seminary, 

381-384,  386,  388. 
Squanto,  Indian,  28,  44. 
Standish,  Capt.  Myles,  29,  43,  44. 
Sternhold,  Thomas,  120.     . 
Stiles,     Pres.     Ezra,     anti-slavery 

efforts,   350  ;    letters  to,  quoted 

and  cited,    286,    287,    289,   295, 

296,    300,    302,    304,   306,   309. 

341- 

Stiles,  Dr.   Henry  R.,  cited,  218. 
Stockbridge,    249,    250,   260,    261, 

316,  323,  324. 
Stoddard,     Rev.     Solomon,     219, 

227,  232,  245-247. 


INDEX 


469 


Stoddardeanism,  245-247,  249,304, 

305-  ^ 

Stone,  Rev.  SartWel,  57,  68,  74. 
Storrs,  Rev.  Dr.  H.  M.,  427. 
Storrs,  Rev.  Dr.  Richard  S.,  420, 

449- 
Story,  William,  60. 
Stoughton,   Judge  John  A.,  cited, 

218,  219. 
Stoughton,    Lieut. -Gov.   William, 

54,  113,  189. 
Stuart,  Prof.  Moses,  372,  388,  398, 

415-417. 

Synods, — of  1637,  77,  80  ;  at  Cam- 
bridge, 1646-48,  93,  123-126, 
J59,  J93  !  °f  1662,  131,  184  ;  the 
Reforming,  of  1679-80,  146, 
147,  188-194,  2ii  ;  attempted  in 
1725,  290. 

T 

Tackawompbait,     Indian     pastor, 

168. 

Tallmadge,  Ohio,  412,  413. 
Tappan,    Prof.    David,    370,  371, 

373,  375,  378. 
Taylor,  Rev.  John,  257,  258,  298, 

300. 
Taylor,  Prof.  Nathaniel  W.,  395, 

398-402,  416,  417,  435,  436. 
Taylor    and    Tyler    Controversy, 

The,  398-402,  435-437- 
Temperance  reform,  443-445  ;  see 

also  Am.  Temperance  Society. 
Tennent,  Rev.  Gilbert,  238,  318, 

319. 

Tenney,  Rev.  Caleb  J.,  356. 
Terry,  Catherine  Elizabeth,  Mrs. 

Leonard  Bacon,  418. 
Thompson,  Rev.  Dr.  A.  C.,  cited, 

154,  165. 
Thompson,   Rev.    Dr.   J.  P.,  430, 

449- 

Thompson,  Pishey,  cited,  59,  60. 
Thorowgood,  Thomas,  138. 
Toleration  Act,  The,  199. 
Tompson,  Rev.  William,  114,  119. 
Townshend,  C.  H.,  cited,  22. 
Toxteth  Park,  Richard  Mather  at, 

101-107. 


Tracy,    Rev.    Joseph,    cited,    276, 

279-281,  388. 
Treat,  Rev.  Samuel,  165. 
Trumbull,      Dr.     J.     Hammond, 

quoted,     163  ;    cited,    149,    150, 

153,  155. 
Tuckney,  Rev.  Dr.  Anthony,  61, 

87- 
Tuthill,  Elisabeth,  wife  of  Richard 

Edwards,  218. 

Twisse,  Rev.  Dr.  William,  62. 
Tyler,  Pres.  Bennet,  400,  436. 
Tyler,  Prof.  Moses  Coit,  cited,  122, 

269. 

U 

Union  Theological  Seminary,  387. 
Unitaria-nism,     see   Liberal    The- 
ology. 

V 

Vane,  Gov.  Henry,  77,  78. 
W 

Waaubon,  Indian  chief,  155-158. 
Walker,   Rev.    Dr.   George   Leon, 

cited,  140,  276,  347,  433,  452. 
Walter,  Rev.  Nehemiah,  143. 
Ward,  Rev.  Nathaniel,  74. 
Ware,     Prof.     Henry,    378,    395, 

398.    • 
Warham,  Rev.  John,  53,  109,  114, 

219. 
Waterbury,  Hopkins's  life  in,  316, 

317,  320. 
Watts,  Rev.  Dr.   Isaac,  236,  252, 

298. 

Webster,  Rev.  Samuel,  257. 
Welde,    Rev.    Thomas,   121,   142, 

143. 

Wendell,  Prof.  Barrett,  cited,  176. 
Wesley,  Rev.  John,  57,  222,  225, 

229. 
West,  Elizabeth,  wife  of  Samuel 

Hopkins,  328,  329. 
West,  Rev,  Stephen,  250,  316. 
Western    Theological     Seminary, 

The,  61,  62. 


470 


INDEX 


Westminster  Assembly,  The,  Con- 
gregationalists  in,  91,  92  ;  men- 
tioned, 61,  62,  81,  85,  116,  118, 
119,  123. 

Westminster  Catechism,  The,  87, 

383,  384- 

Westminster  Confession,  see  Con- 
fession. 

West  Newbury,  Woods's  re- 
lations to,  371-375,  382-385, 
394- 

Weston,  Thomas,  29,  30. 

Wethersfield,  221,  222. 

Wheeler,  Abigail,  Mrs.  Leonard 
Woods,  372. 

Wheeler,  Joseph,  372. 

Wheelock,  Rev.  Dr.  Eleazer,  280, 
281. 

Wheelwright,  Rev.  John,  76,  77. 

Whiston,  Prof.  William,  298. 

Whitaker,  Rev.  Dr.  Nathanial, 
341. 

Whitby,  Rev.  Daniel,  252,  298, 
300. 

Whitefield,  Rev.  George,  the 
"Great  Awakening,"  237,  276- 
282  ;  his  preaching,  276-278  ; 
his  censoriousness,  278,279;  esti- 
mate of  Harvard  and  Yale,  279  ; 
at  New  Haven,  278,  318  ;  views 
on  conversion,  225  ;  emphasis 
on  bodily  effects,  279;  commenda- 
tion of  Edwards,  237  ;  character- 
ization of  Boston,  275  ;  estimate 
of  Davenport,  281  ;  mentioned. 
286. 

Whitgift,  Archbishop  John,  51. 

Whiting,  Rev.  Samuel, quoted,  58, 
59,  61-63  ;  cited,  55,  56,  60,  64. 

Whitmore,  W.  H.,  cited,  197. 

Willard,  Rev.  Samuel,  203,  207, 
208. 

William  III.,  of  England,  197, 
198,  200. 

Williams  College,  387,  388. 

Williams,  Col.  Elisha,  221. 

Williams,  Bishop  John,  64,  66,  68. 

Williams,  Roger,  his  banishment, 
81,  82;  his  controversy  with  Cot- 
ton, 8 1-86  ;  his  efforts  to  Chris- 


tianize the  Indians,  153,  162 
mentioned,  no. 

Williams,  Rev.  Solomon,  280,  281. 

"Willingness  to  be  Damned," 
Doctrine  of,  239,  240,  257,  321, 
346,  347,  371- 

Wilson,  Rev.  John,  of  Boston,  53, 
69,  70,  77,  79,  81,  109,  142,  155. 

Wilson,  Rev.  John,  Jr.,  113. 

Winslow,  Gov.  Edward,  25,  29, 
39- 

Winthrop,  Gov.  John,  arrival,  53; 
in  the  Antinomian  dispute,  77, 
79  ;  at  the  organization  of  the 
Dorchester  church,  in  ;  at  a 
Dorchester  council,  112,  113  ; 
his  Journal  quoted,  69,70,  III- 
113  ;  cited,  68,  73-75,  78-80,  83, 
119,  142,  159,  268. 

Winwick,  The  grammar  school,  99. 

Witchcraft,  at  Salem,  201. 

Wituwamat,  Indian  chief,  29. 

Wood,  Anthony,  cited,  101-103. 

Woods,  Prof.  Leonard,  early  life, 
364  ;  at  Harvard,  365-368  ;  re- 
ligious experience,  368,  369  ; 
theological  training,  370,  372  ; 
marriage,  372  ;  pastorate  at 
West  Newbury,  371-373  ;  creed 
revision,  372  ;  his  master's 
oration,  373  ;  friendship  for 
Spring,  Morse  and  Pearson,  374, 
375  ;  deemed  a  moderate  Hop- 
kinsian,  374,  375  ;  his  irenic 
spirit,  375,  376,  384,  385  ;  two 
theological  schools  planned, 
379-382  ;  united  in  Andover 
Seminary,  382-385  ;  is  appointed 
Professor  of  Theology,  383,  385  ; 
his  inauguration,  385,  386;  in- 
terest in  missions  and  reforms, 
387-389  ;  as  a  teacher,  389-394  ; 
his  writings,  394-404 ;  their 
courtesy,  396  ;  his  Letters  to 
Unitarians,  395,  397,  398  ;  his 
Letters  to  Taylor,  395,  398-402  ; 
his  controversy  with  Mahan,395, 
402,  403  ;  his  History  of  Ando- 
ver, 404  ;  his  lectures,  404  ;  last 
days,  403-405  ;  mentioned,  409. 


INDEX 


471 


Woolsey,  Pres.  Theodore  D.,  cited, 

414,  417,  432. 
Worcester,  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel,  388, 

389- 

X 

Xavier,  Francis,  138. 
Y 

Yale  University,  in  Edwards's 
student  days,  220-222,  226,  227  ; 
Hopkins's  student  life  at,  317- 
320  ;  Whitefield's  criticism  of, 
279  ;  comes  under  Edwardean 


influences,  362  ;  religious  state 
at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  367  ;  Bacon's  connec- 
tion with,  413,  414,  421,  452, 
453  ;  instruction  in  theology  at, 
378,  380 ;  the  Divinity  School 
of,  386,  399,  416,  452,  453  ;  see 
also  New  Haven  Theology,  and 
Taylor  and  Tyler  Controversy. 

Young,  Alexander,  Collections  of 
sources  edited  by,  cited,  25,  39, 
55,  56,  58,  59,  60,  63,  67,  68,  98, 
108,  147. 

Youngs,  Rev.  David,  318. 


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